


To Steal the Sea of Galilee

by Cas_tellations



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Criminals, Found Family, Knives, M/M, Mutual Pining, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, art heist, intergalactic art heist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-09 05:00:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 37,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20847917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cas_tellations/pseuds/Cas_tellations
Summary: To which we shall reach our demise: The Storm on the Sea of Galilee.The Prince built them up, out of the broken pieces that he found laying in a graveyard, a bar, an illegal hoverbike garage, and out behind a hospital. He found them at their lowest, when they’d do anything if it paid a pretty penny. The Prince built them up, and knows the wrongs that they want to right but aren’t quite sure how to go about yet.The Prince built them, and The Prince can tear them down again, if the time calls for it.When the time calls for it.Or: It's the only art heist that's impossible. Which is exactly why Keith is hired for it.





	To Steal the Sea of Galilee

* * *

_ I. _

His lungs heave, and his chest burns. His heart screams, trying to pump blood faster. His legs are but a blur - running, running, running. _ Leap over the uneven ground, tear your way through the spider’s web, but don’t slow down _ , _ whatever you do, _ Shiro’s voice runs through his head on repeat, like some sort of prayer. _ Don’t let them catch you. _ One of his boots is untied and the laces are long, threatening to trip him up. He hears thundering footsteps behind him and a new wave of adrenaline courses through his veins, through the blood that’s streaming through his body, seeping through the cuts on his face left in the wake of the whip-like tree branches. His stride lengthens and he wants to look behind him. He wants to check to see how far behind _ they _are. He ducks his head down, clenching his fists, and runs like the wind that whips over the forest’s treetops. 

This planet is green - swirling with massive rainforests, hundreds of thousands of thin rivers slicing the planet to pieces. It’s warm, almost uncomfortably close to its massive red star. The star hangs high in the sky now, but the canopy of lush green leaves hides it from view. It’s not like Keith has time to slow down and admire the planet’s beauty, anyway. 

He leaps over a massive tree root and frantically slaps the device on his wrist. It crackles weakly, and then a small arrow points back in the right direction. Keith swerves and barely misses running head-first into a tree branch. He almost laughs then, at the irony of it all. God, wouldn’t that be a way to go? To survive everything up until now and then to be decapitated by a tree, of all things. He keeps running - keeps pushing ahead. 

The men behind him are slowing and Keith grins as their footsteps fade. 

The ship materializes into view and Keith jumps into the open hatch. He rolls onto his back and the hatch closes, and the engines roar as the ships rockets towards the sky, sending leaves and twigs raining down to the ground in a flurry of activity.

“That was fun,” Keith grins, though his chest heaves. He sits up and pulls his sweat-stained tank top over his head. He throws it in the general direction of the laundry basket and flops back down, the cool metal a welcome relief against his overheated skin. “Piece of cake.” 

Shiro’s laugh echoes around the ship as he twists back in the pilot's seat to look at Keith through his forelock of white hair. “Only you would call that easy. The guards almost caught you.” 

“_ Almost _being the keyword there,” Keith says lightly, and then adds in a tone that’s almost sad, “I didn’t even get a chance to use my new knives.” 

“What a shame,” Shiro says airily. “Maybe next time.” 

“Let's hope,” Keith says, sitting up and re-tying his boot. He’s slowly getting his breathing back under control. 

He stands then, emptying his pockets into the little cubbies that Shiro had not only painted but also labeled. ‘_ Throwing stars _ ’ one says, and another ‘ _ tracking thingies _ ’. There’s one for ‘ _ Keith's knives _ ’ and _ ‘Keith's bandages _’ right next to one another, which Keith had argued against at first, because how dare Shiro assume that Keith was the only one to get injured on missions. Then he’d accepted it after Shiro had taped a little whiteboard to the Ship’s wall and had marked a little ‘x’ on every day that Keith had to use the bandages versus Shiro. 

“We probably broke some record for how fast that was,” Shiro says once Keith finishes putting everything away and sits rather unceremoniously in the copilot’s seat, legs stretched across one of the arm rests, sitting on the wheelchair sideways. 

“Did you time it?” 

“Twelve minutes from landing to takeoff,” Shiro says. “Well, and seven seconds, but I figured we could round it down a touch.” 

“Damn,” Keith says. “I bet even Pidge hasn’t ever been that fast.”

“Exactly,” Shiro says, and the smile that he throws in Keith’s direction is so open and soft that Keith’s knees go a little bit weak as he looks at his best friend. At least he’s already sitting down. 

“The Prince will be pleased.” 

“He’s always pleased with us, c’mon.” 

“Yeah but - twelve minutes, Shiro.” 

“It is pretty miraculous.”

“Yeah,” Keith says, and he’s starting to come down from the adrenaline rush now that their ship hangs weightlessly in space. “We’ve come a long way since Europa, hey?” 

“Oh God-” Shiro laughs, tilting his head back and throwing a hand over his mouth. “I almost forgot about that one.” 

“How could you forget? It was our greatest adventure.” 

“Blocked out due to traumatic memories.” Shiro’s still laughing, and his smile is so bright that Keith swears that it could put any star to shame.

“That’s the only plausible answer,” Keith says seriously. “I thought we’d never get out of that cupboard.”

“Part of my soul is still there, I swear.” 

“It smelled so bad.” 

“It was _ so _ tiny I thought we were gonna run out of _ air _.” 

“We almost did,” Keith says. “It was almost a good thing that the guard found us just before the museum opened or else we might still be there.” 

“I can’t believe that you hid us in a cupboard that automatically locks from the outside,” Shiro says, and Keith would definitely pay a fortune’s worth of money if it meant that the smile on Shiro’s face stayed that brilliantly happy all the time.

“How was I supposed to tell?” Keith says indignantly. “I was just trying to make sure that we weren’t caught and thrown in some jail for the rest of our lives.” 

“At least we got the painting.” 

“Too bad The Prince didn’t want it anymore,” Keith says, and leans back, looking at the ship upside-down. 

“I’m sure he still sold it for whatever he wanted.” 

“Yeah, it was a private buyer. But the person who commissioned the mission died, so.” 

“Really?” Shiro asks.

“Yep. The Prince had to sell it to the commissioner’s twice-removed cousin who just happened to have the same taste in illegal goods,” Keith says. 

“Well it’s lucky that we were able to sell it at all. We’d never hear the end of it if he was stuck with a painting of a Llama.” 

“He would have asked us that we please go back in time and stay in that cupboard forever.” Keith grins.

Keith drinks in the sound of Shiro’s laughter. 

“Yep,” Shiro confirms. 

“But hey, at least this painting is not a Llama,” Keith says. “It’s actually pretty beautiful.” 

“I’ve seen the pictures,” Shiro says. “The pond - the duck.” 

“Yeah.” Keith swings his legs around and stands. Shiro slows the ship to a stop and Keith walks across the deck, grabbing the thin metal cylindrical container. “It fit perfectly.” He uncaps the container and slides the painting out. 

He has cut the canvas out of its frame so that he could roll it up - it’s better for transport that way, even though most of the time Lotor prefered that they took the frame with it. He says that Keith is sloppy with his knife skills, which is something that Keith will argue to his grave. His knife skills are phenomenal, thank you very much. It’s a trait that his mother passed to him and something that he’s honed throughout his life, far before he fell into the art heist business. But cutting canvas is different than slicing through skin, and sure - he’s made mistakes, but it hasn’t been detrimental. Besides, cutting art out of frames is something that nobody’s good at, no matter how many times they practice. 

The canvas is new - the painting is only a few years old, but it quickly gained popularity within the art world as it was painted from Proxima’s very own new creation of paint. The paint is unlike anything else because it stands strikingly three dimensional from the page and the colours gleam and morph over time. It’s beautiful to look at. It catches one’s eye so quickly. 

Shiro wolf whistles as Keith unrolls it. It’s not too large, but he still needs to hold his arms considerably far apart for it to be completely unrolled. 

“That’s…” 

“Gorgeous,” Keith fills in for him. 

“No wonder The Prince was so strict about us getting it as quickly as possible.” 

“Twelve minutes!” Keith says and rolls it back up, sliding it comfortably into its container. The containers were designed specifically not tight enough to crack the paint - at least in most of the newer paintings - but small enough that it could be transported during a high-speed chase with little to no fanfare. 

Keith slips back into the copilot's seat and buckles himself in as Shiro says, “And seven seconds. You ready to head back now?” 

“Better now than when the guards get their shit together and take to the skies,” Keith says, staring out into an abyss of space that’s stabbed through with millions of lights.

He sees beauty easily. 

“Yeah, yeah.” Shiro flicks some switches on the dashboard. “At least we’re pretty close. We won’t be late for whatever the hell The Prince is planning this time.” 

“Twelve minutes,” Keith says. “We couldn’t be late if we tried.” 

He has to remind himself to look back out into space instead of looking at his best friend’s face. It’s just that Shiro looks so happy, his body void of a tension that he so often carries around missions. Keith can’t find it within himself to not treasure these moments. 

The ship jerks forwards and Keith’s spine is pressed into the back of his seat. 

They get back the The Prince’s mothership in record time. The ship touches down in the bay with a soft purr and Keith unbuckles himself, stretching his arms above his head and leaning back as he stands. His spine lets out a huge crack and Shiro winces in Keith’s peripheral.

The Prince has already set up a lavish dinner by the time they arrive, but that’s not what catches Keith’s eye first. 

“Pidge!” he calls. “Hunk!” 

Pidge lets out a squeak and launches herself in his direction, careening into his arms. He squeezes her tight and then grabs Hunks hand. Hunk pulls him into a hug and slaps him on the back, pulling away with a massive smile on his face. Shiro gets the same treatment. 

“It’s good to see you,” Keith says. “What have you guys been up to?” 

“That’s classified,” Pidge says, and Hunk waggles his eyebrows. “What about you guys? We haven’t seen you in… it must be a month? Two?”

“Sometime around there,” Keith says tightly. “We’ve been doing the same old stuff. It’s not the same without you guys, though.” 

“What he’s trying to say,” Shiro throws one arm around Keith’s shoulder and his heart shudders in his chest for a second - Shiro startled him, that’s all, “is that we miss you.” 

“Sap,” Pidge elbows him. “Wonder what The Prince has in mind for us, hey?” 

“It could be another heist,” Hunk offers. “That’s what we were brought together for in the first place, after all.”

“But what heist?” Shiro asks. “We haven't had to go on one together since… well, since the Kerberos mission.” 

Keith shudders at that. 

“Well, let’s hope he’s not sending us back there,” Hunk says. “That was the literal worst experience ever.”

“Hey, at least we got out of it alive.”

“Did we?” 

“You raise a very good question.” 

The room that they stand in is primarily red - there’s a massive table running down the centre and the dark wooden floor is covered primarily by a thick crimson rug. The wall at the head of the table is a dark blood-red with pattern running through it; the wall directly to the right of that is glass, looking right out into the abyss. The other walls are black, but the darkness is barely visible through the massive array of artwork that hangs essentially from ceiling to floor. On one side of the room, some couches are pushed up into a circle formation around a coffee table beside a grand piano. 

“Well whatever it is,” Kith says, “I hope it’s a challenge.”

“Our last one was twelve minutes,” Shiro says just as The Prince walks through the door.

“Twelve minutes?” he says curiously. “I thought the guards would've put up more of a fight, no?”

“I’m very fast,” Keith says, lifting his chin. 

“That you are. May I see it?” 

Shiro hands over the metal container and The Prince unscrews the lid. He lets the painting fall out and unrolls it just as Keith had done on the ship. He gives a slight nod and rolls it back up, expression unchanging. He says, “Well done,” and then, “Please, sit.” 

Keith slips into the seat beside Shiro, across from Pidge and Hunk. The Prince sits at the head of the table, his long titanium hair cascading across his shoulders. He raises an eyebrow and flicks his hand towards the grand piano, where a hauntingly beautiful young woman begins to play, and sound flickers throughout the room.

The table has been set with more cutlery than Keith could ever know what to do with, and he stares at the four different kinds of tiny forks in morbid curiosity. 

There is a black lace tablecloth layered on top of a shimmery silver one and a tall blue waitress slips between Shiro and Keith to pull back the covers on the platters, revealing piles of perfect food to the lavish room. Keith licks his lips and glances in The Prince’s direction. 

His gaze gets caught on the Prince’s cat-like purple eyes. 

For a second, it feels like The Prince’s mind is boring a hole into his soul, with the intensity that he passes to Keith. Then, he seems to come back to himself and flashes his fangs in a smile that is so incredibly cold and distant in comparison to Shiro’s. 

The Prince has such a refined exterior that it is so easy to forget that they are in the presence of one of the most powerful, influential people in the entire universe. Not to mention, the most dangerous. Keith has seen his swordsmanship skills up close and personal. The Prince is unforgiving with his hits and does not hold back. Perhaps that’s what earned him such a high position in the underworld - he will halt at nothing to gain triumph over his opponents. If he must take lives, then he will, without a shred of empathy. But in the same breath, he builds up people, like he built up Keith, and Shiro - and Pidge and Hunk, though their existence had not been shredded apart as much as Keith and Shiro’s had been, back before they were found by The Prince. 

The Prince is dangerous, and Keith owes him a debt that is almost impossible to repay. 

Maybe that’s why he’s stayed in this job for so long. 

But then again, imagining doing anything but the job seems impossible. Because, in the end, he loves it to a fault. The adrenaline, the perfect mixture of team and solo work… the way that everything falls into place when he’s running through the forest, with blood falling from his face, barely even recognizing the pain that he must be feeling. He doesn’t think that he’ll ever be able to find a way out of this life, even if he wanted to.

“Dig in, shall we?” The Prince says, reaching for the tongs. 

Keith eats so much food that he can’t stomach another bite and then sips at his wine, letting the background piano and the dull lull of conversation wash over him. He leans back in his chair and rests a hand on his stomach, looking up at the chandelier-ridden ceiling. The wine is delicious. The company is better.

“How’s the ship coming along?” Keith hears Shiro ask Hunk. 

“Almost there,” Hunk says. “We’ve been experimenting with Shay’s tech - trying to integrate it into what we’ve got here. The code just needs a few tweaks for everything to be biosynthesized properly and then it’ll be good to go. A completely self-sustaining ship, renewable power, supportive of plant and alien life no matter how far away from a star it is.”

“I would die for the ship in a millisecond,” Pidge deadpans. “Lucifer knows I’ve already sold my soul for it ten times over.” 

“Has it got a name yet?” 

“Nah, we can’t decide. Pidge is voting for Anarchy but I think that good ol’ fashioned’s the way to go. Mock Apollo Seven.” 

“Oh my God. If it was just Mock Apollo Seven it would be fine,” Pidge says with an eye roll. “Tell them what you wanted its nickname to be.” 

Hunk sighs like this is an argument that they’ve had thousands of times, and then says quickly, “For short it could be Paul.” 

“And that’s why I’ve vetoed the name,” Pidge says. “When I die, I do not want people to talk about how I agreed to name a cutting-edge one-of-a-kind first biosynthesis ship ‘Paul’. Nope. Not happening.” 

“Ships don’t even need a name,” Keith tacks on dully. “Mine and Shiro’s doesn’t have a name.” 

“False,” Shiro says from beside Keith. “You refuse to acknowledge her name.” He lifts his eyes to Pidge’s and says in complete seriousness. “Her name is Maria.”

Pidge sighs and looks at one of her forks with a calculating look in her eye, like she’s seriously considering the logistics of calling it quits and stabbing herself in the eye with it. “You and me, Keithy boy,” she says. “You and me are the same. We have to deal with these dumbasses.” 

Keith snorts and nods, while Shiro shoots him an indignant look. 

“Well, at the very least, at the end of the day it matters not what the ships are called,” The Prince speaks up after watching them bicker with an amused look dancing across his face. “It is only imperative that it gets you where you need to be.”

“Sure,” Hunk says, “but also, they’re kinda like a part of our team, right? They deserve names.” 

“But not names like Paul,” Pidge says quickly. 

They chat for a long while, until the bottles of red wine are empty and the waitress brings them another round, and then another after that. Their plates have long since been cleared off and they had all managed to demolish the cake that Hunk had prepared for the occasion, which had tasted quite a bit like a bite of heaven. 

The waitress comes around and drops thick manila folders onto the table before each of them, and The Prince says, with a smile that could only be described as devilish, “Now, as I’m sure you’ve deducted, it’s time for your next mission.”

“All of us?” Keith asks.

“You will all be needed to work together on this one, yes,” The Prince says. “As I’m sure you’ll come to see, this is no ordinary run of the mill mission. This is-” 

“Proxima-” Pidge gasps, cutting over the Prince. “You want us to… to execute a heist on Proxima.”

Keith stares at The Prince. There’s no way… 

There’s no possible way that The Prince can be serious about this. Not Proxima. Proxima is in a no-touch zone. Proxima means certain death. Proxima means… 

“Holy shit,” Shiro says, and Keith finally flips open his own folder. 

“This is an Earth painting,” Keith says, his jaw falling open. “You want us to get an Earth painting from Proxima.”

“This is not possible,” Hunk says slowly. “This is a mistake… or a joke, right?” 

“Not in the slightest,” The Prince says. “This will be hard, but if anybody can do this, you can.”

“No, wait. No - Uh…” Pidge frowns, trailing off. “We’ve done hard jobs before. Hell, we’ve gotten the Mona Lisa - which, by the way, took three months of careful planning and resulted in us having to betray a friend. That was hard, but… this is impossible.”

“Proxima is the one place that nobody can steal from,” Keith says. “I’ve heard the stories of those who’ve tried. It’s not pretty. It’s… they die, okay? It’s a punishment of the highest order on that goddamn planet.”

“This is a death sentence,” Shiro says, and Keith isn’t imagining the growl he hears in his voice. “I’m sorry, but I can’t take my team on that mission.” He looks to Pidge and Hunk, then directly to Keith. “I can’t take them on a suicide mission. I’m not losing them like this.” 

“Shiro…” Keith says softly, but his words get lodged in his throat and he grabs at his wine glass, chugging the rest of it down and then swiping at the bottle. 

Pidge is staring into her own glass in dismay. “Are you truly serious about this?” 

“Dead serious,” The Prince says. “Absolutely.” 

And there… there’s no trace of a joke in his eyes. His lips don’t even twitch. His shoulders are a tense line and he’s leaning forwards slightly, eyes darting between his prized team - between the people that he found, dying and starving in their own grief and guilt - the people who he managed to build up out of a collection of broken pieces. 

“Fuck,” Keith says. “Get some hard liquor and then we can talk.” 

“Very well.” The Prince nods to the waitress, who had been standing awkwardly in the corner. “And you - Melnok.” He addresses the pianist, and the music cuts off with a harsh clang, “You may leave. Speak of this to nobody. Understand?” He lifts an eyebrow and the pianist nods sharply, scuttling away. 

Keith looks at the picture pinned to the first page in the folder. 

It’s - it’s beautiful. There’s no denying it. It’s a boat - an old-timey earth ship tossing and turning on a heaving, molting sea. White caps splash against its hull and the sun streams through a gap in dark clouds, bright light streaming on to the sail and the humans trying to stay afloat on their battered voyager. The sea is black and frothy with a fury that Keith knows he’s felt deep in his soul. Dark colours clash with brights, and it evokes an emotion so deep within his chest. Like - like he is the painting, feeling its anguish, and that terror of the humans in the middle of the sea, lost and fighting for their lives against a force stronger than anything and everything they’ve ever seen before. 

Earth paintings are rare because of the bombings during the third world war on the planet. Countless galleries and museums alike were destroyed completely, left to be nothing but rubble on the ground. Countless ancient artifacts made it onto a casualty list, the history that they hold stolen from the world forever. The paintings and artifacts that were not destroyed were stolen by thieves from other thieves, and some found their way to galleries where they would be cherished and loved till the end of time itself, while others perished in the vastness of space. 

The Mona Lisa was found in a private gallery owned by a very rich god-like being on the planet of Versaile. It was not easy to get ahold of. It alone is worth nearly a trillion units. 

Art from planets that have been destroyed instantly gains popularity and value, but the one that Keith is staring at now, his eyes caught on its edges, the soft lines and the sharp contrasting colours- 

-He knows of this painting. His mother told him stories of this painting. Shiro mentioned it a few times, in passing. 

For not only is it a painting hailing from an extinct, crippled planet, but it was stolen when the planet was not yet entering its final years. It was stolen, and was not given up for the huge ransoms offered. This was not because the thieves didn’t want the money, but because the painting in question had already been taken out of their possession. 

The painting had been sold to the Altean King, who had taken a liking to Earth paintings from the golden age. It had lived on Altea and been treated with the utmost care for a millennium before Altea reached its demise with a Galran disease that swept through its pristine mountains. One of the surviving Alteans, the late warrior Allura, was in Keith’s good favour. 

The Painting had been transferred to Proxima’s universe-renowned gallery at the King Alfor’s dying request. A few of his other pieces of art also made the cut, and the rest were transferred out back to their planets of origin. 

The Storm on the Sea of Galilee had found two dying planets to be its home. In some tales, it was regarded with caution - an omen of death and destruction, for wherever the storming sea of thrashing waves went, a planet’s demise soon followed. Its popularity only grew after Proxima fed into the tales and used it for a tourist attraction. Word is it even has its own guard standing by it at every moment of every day and night. 

Beauty can be found in strange places; Keith knows this better than anybody else. But it doesn't seem strange to him that the painting is so beautiful. 

It had been traded off from person to person for hundreds of years. 

Is he going to have the chance to hold it in his own two mundane hands? Does he even deserve that, to hold a piece of art with a history so rich that it’s stamped with a priceless mark and regarded as important to Proxima as is Proxima’s own star?

“You may think about it,” The Prince says, “but I hope you do understand that a ‘No’ would be very unfortunate for both parties involved.” 

The waitress comes back with a bottle of something, and Keith can’t find it in himself to care too much about its contents before pouring himself a generous drink and tilting his head back. 

Nunvil. Of course, The Prince’s drink of choice. Keith chokes it down. He preferred the wine, dry as it was. 

“I don’t think this is possible,” Shiro says with a frown. “You know the risks of this, right? Do you understand that you could lose everything you’ve spent so long building up?”

“I have faith that you will make the right decision,” The Prince says, which is completely and utterly unhelpful. He stands then, and Keith almost wants to yell at him, because how dare he spring this on them and then leave them stewing with an impossible decision?

He walks towards the door and Keith says, “And what if we don’t? What if we refuse you? What will happen then?”

The Prince stops in his tracks and turns slowly to face Keith. “Well then, thief. The universe shall know of you, won’t they?” 

And… and there’s the catch. The Prince built them up, out of the broken pieces that he found laying in a graveyard, and a bar, an illegal hoverbike garage, and out behind a hospital. He found them at their lowest, when they’d do anything if it paid a pretty penny. The Prince built them up, getting to know them - getting to know all the crimes that they’ve committed, the wrongs that they want to right but aren’t quite sure how to go about yet.

The Prince built them, and The Prince can tear them down again, if the time calls for it. 

_ When _the time calls for it.

They’ve got a choice. 

But the choice is less between yes or no, but rather between losing everything right away, or trying their best to pull off an impossible act - buying more time. Keith knows, deep down, in his gut, that no matter what they choose, they will lose. It’s just a matter of when. 

“I hope you choose right,” The Prince says, and Keith feels a lump grow in his throat. “Flip the page over, please. I think you’ll be impressed with the starting price of this one.” And he leaves then, a sickening layer of tension resting over the room. 

Keith flips the page over. 

There is a number there, crisp and black, standing out starkly on the white page. 

“Holy shit,” Hunk says, and Pidge lets out a low wolf whistle. 

“Well, fuck.” 

The hardest painting to steal, for the largest price. Keith’s eyes are wide as he looks over the number, and all the zeros written behind a tiny “1”. This many units - god, it could last each of them many lifetimes over. But it’s pay for a death sentence. It’ll be bail money, and even then it won’t be enough. 

God, it’s an impossible decision. 

Pidge says, “Well. That sure is a price, huh?” 

“It’s not worth it,” Keith says. “Nothing's worth what being caught will cause.” 

“Who says we’ll be caught?” 

“Oh come on, nobody’s ever managed to pull something like this off. There’s no way we won’t be caught.” 

“We’re the best of the best.” 

“Still, it’s a suicide mission.”

“But that much money…” 

“It’s tantalizing.” 

Shiro stands from the table, pushing his chair out. He leaves his folder on the table, and moves over to the huge grand piano sitting in the corner. He sits at the bench there, his head bowed. 

“I’m in,” Pidge says, and Keith rips his eyes away from Shiro’s exhausted frame. 

Hunk says, “I’ll tag along too, then.” He says it with such nonchalance, but Keith can see the anxiety in the line of his shoulders and the furrow of his brow. 

“Shiro?” Keith asks, grabbing his drink and swirling it around in the glass a bit. “How d’you feel about all of this?” 

Shiro is still for a long while, and Keith almost wonders if Shiro even heard him, if the room hadn’t been so deathly quiet. “You said it yourself,” he says finally, silently. “It’s a suicide mission.” 

“We all need to be in this for it to work,” Keith says cautiously. “What’s your call? You’re our leader, after all.” 

“My gut says no,” Shiro says, “but…” 

“But it looks like a nice price, doesn’t it?” Keith prompts, and he wants to go over there suddenly. He wants to tell Shiro that whatever happens, they have each other, and if they have each other then there’s no way that they can truly lose. 

Shiro nods and rolls his neck. “Yeah, it does.” His fingers are resting on the piano keys. “But I don’t want to make a call without weighing out all the pros and cons.”

“We can start a T-chart,” Hunk says. “If that helps.”

Shiro snorts, and there’s a fleeting smile playing across his lips as he glances at Hunk. “It’s not bad enough for a T-chart yet.” 

“Lemme know when,” Hunk says with a grin.

“Sure,” Shiro says, and then he begins to play. 

Keith gets caught in the music for a moment, until Pidge taps his chin and he realises that he’s been gaping at Shiro. Shiro, who’s so purely beautiful. Keith is so glad that Shiro is in his life; he’s so glad that he has such an amazing best friend and partner. 

Pidge hoists herself up onto the table next to Keith, and her legs swing through the air in time to the lull of the push and pull of the piano music. Hunk moves over to one of the couches around the coffee table, and leans back into the cushions, flipping through the information in the folder. 

Keith turns to the next page. Blueprints. The next whole section is blueprints, and then there’s some employee records, a list of exhibits, and some pamphlets. It’s all pretty elementary stuff - The Prince wasn’t one to usually provide them with much information pertaining to the actual heist. No, that’s what he employed them for. But it’s sweet, in a way, to see the way that he’s tried to gather as much information about Proxima as he could. All on his own, too, by the looks of it. Maybe one day The Prince would make it out to the field with them - that is, if they made it through this heist first. 

They stay there for a while too long, suspended in space, music flooding around their shoulders, and Keith sways to it and hums along. They don’t have a piano on their ship. Shiro has one in his quarters on the Prince’s ship and Keith can sometimes hear the faint music flooding through their thin walls at night, but it’s not often that he's able to enjoy it like this, all open and raw, like a fresh wound - a chunk of flesh carved out by a sharp blade. 

Keith methodically takes sips of the nunvil, and pours himself more when the glass gets empty. 

It’s close to an hour later, probably, when the music fades out and the room is full with unsteady breaths, waiting. 

Shiro doesn’t stand. He barely even raises his head. He says, almost stiffly, “Hunk. Do you think… do you think this is possible?” 

Hunk, who had finished reading through the folder and had stretched out across the couch, says, “It’s… it shouldn’t be. It really, really shouldn’t be. And if it were anybody else, I’d say that it was actually physically and emotionally impossible. But we’re… not to be overdramatic or arrogant, but we’re not like anybody else. The Prince said so, and I think we all know it, deep down. We… we might actually be able to pull this one off, if we’re careful.”

“Keith?” Shiro prompts.

“It’s… I mean, look at all the units The Prince is offering. We’ve - I mean, we’ve gotten the Mona Lisa. We’ve done things like this before.” He shrugs, and looks to Pidge for help. “It might be a suicide mission. But you heard what The Prince said. It’s not like we have much of a choice.” 

“Yeah,” Pidge says, hopping off the table and pacing over to where Shiro sits at the piano bench. “I think we owe it to ourselves to try. If things get shitty, I trust you guys to make the best choices, and the new ship should be ready by mission time, so if it all goes downhill it’s ready to grab and run with. State of the art and self-sustaining, after all.” 

Shiro smiles then, even if it is a little pinched. “I trust you too,” he says. “All of you. With my life. I really do.”

“So you’re in?” Pidge asks quietly.

“I… yeah. Yeah, I’m in.” 

It’s usually something they’re happy about: receiving a new mission. This time though, there aren’t any cries for joy, or even a champagne bottle passed around. There’s no laughter and no fist bumps. It’s somber, the room quiet. 

“Okay,” Hunk says, nodding. He looks as if he’s about to say something else, and then abruptly closes his jaw.

Instead, Pidge speaks. “We should go finish up the ship, then. Get it mission ready by tomorrow morning.”

“Sure,” Keith says, waving them off. “I think we’ll stay here for a bit. I’ll let The Prince know what we’ve decided.”

“Great,” Hunk says, standing. 

They leave then, and in their wake Keith is left with the raw realisation that _ he doesn’t know where they go from here. _

No mission has ever been like this. The short notice, the impossible security. The painting though - by Odin, is it gorgeous. It holds within itself something that Keith has never seen in any other painting. 

It’s - it’s breathtaking. If any piece of art is worth what they are about to do, this one is. 

Keith doesn’t hesitate as he walks over to Shiro, and Shiro scoots over wordlessly, making room for Keith on the piano bench. He looks at Keith then, with a soft smile that Keith returns effortlessly because it’s so, so incredibly easy to lose himself around Shiro, and to smile even when the world is falling down around them. 

_ He loves Shiro _. The realisation hits him like a dagger to the stomach, the kind that embeds itself down in deep and twists through the small intestine, tearing apart his guts. He blinks, wide-eyed, and his gaze gets caught on Shiro’s mouth. He forgets to breathe then, just for a moment. 

“Hey, Red. You okay?” Shiro’s voice is warm, but rough around the edges. 

“I- yeah. Yeah, I’m good.” 

“You look a bit…” Shiro frowns, trailing off. “Are you overheating? Your face is all red.” 

“It’s the booze,” Keith says quickly. “The Prince gave me fuckin’ nunvil.” 

“Ah. That’s the stuff.” 

Keith rests his fingers on the piano keys, tipping his eyes down to look at the contrasting black and white. He feels Shiro’s eyes burning into the side of his head, and then the relief when he looks away, back down at the piano as Keith is doing himself. 

“Remember the song I taught you?” 

“It’s uh…” Keith’s brow furrows, and he moves his hands over. “This one first, right?” He presses down on the key. That sounds about right. 

“Yeah.” Shiro plays the same key in a different octave, and then moves his fingers over. “And then this one, yeah?” 

“Uh huh.” 

Keith plays then, shakily. It’s slow, completely different from Shiro’s own fluidity. The sound bounces off the walls, echoing around the otherwise silent room. Shiro watches his hands and Keith tries to remember the right keys to touch. When did Shiro teach him this? Three, maybe four missions ago. It’s been a while. Keith’s had other things on his mind. 

Shiro knocks his shoulder against Keith's, and joins in, staying slow, staying with Keith. 

Keith breathes, and his heart feels so, so incredibly full. 

His hands studder for a minute and Shiro keeps going, so Keith stops altogether, and tries not to think about how they’re pressed together from shoulder to hip. Keith could listen to Shiro play for the rest of his mortal life and throughout his next one too. It’s not just music - not the way that Shiro plays it. 

Shiro pours his whole entire soul into the sounds, and sometimes that means that it sounds like he’s crying out in pain. But other times - times like now, it sounds like… god, it sounds angelic. It’s light, and beautiful. It sounds how sunlight feels on pale, winter-worn skin.

Then, a darker note is hit, and Shiro draws away, hunching forwards, swaying slightly. And this - this is a summer’s storm, creeping into the sun’s rays, taking over its light. This is Shiro’s anxieties over the mission manifested into a piece of fluid art. 

The music fades out soon after it begins and Shiro looks tired. 

Keith wants to say something. He should say something. He can’t think of a single word that he’d be able to utter to help ease Shiro’s tension. 

In the end though, it’s not Keith who has to say anything anyway. 

Shiro says, “Hey, this is gonna work.” 

“Yes,” Keith replies quickly. “I know. It will.” 

“But- On the off chance that it doesn’t…” Shiro shakes his head. “...If it doesn’t, I want you to leave with Pidge and Hunk on their ship.”

Keith nods slowly. “Yeah, they said as much. We could all be on the run.”

“Sure,” Shiro says, and frowns a bit. “All of us.” 

“...Yeah. We’re a team. We stick together.” Keith can’t stop his puzzled tone from seeping into his words. What’s Shiro trying to tell him?

He’s about to ask when Shiro says, “I’m gonna head to my quarters. Gotta pack some stuff up.” 

Shiro doesn’t stand though, and neither does Keith.

“I gotta find The Prince, anyway,” Keith says. “And yeah, packing. That’s always fun.” 

Shiro snorts, and Keith should get up now. He should leave. This weird emotion that he’s got in his chest around Shiro is dangerous. 

“I’ll check in with you before I go to bed, okay?” Keith says. It’s not something that they’d done for a long time, now. Back in the day, when they were still trying to recover from deep wounds that had torn through their minds over the years stuck in isolation, they were constantly around each other. Less so now, even though they’re always matched together for missions. 

Keith hasn’t had to sleep outside of Shiro’s bedroom for a year now, back then, his mind completely certain that someone would try to break into Shiro’s room in the middle of the night to kill him, to take him away from Keith just as his father and mother had been brutally ripped from his grasp. 

Checking in before bed - and the desperation in his voice, too.

Shiro must pity him, because he says, “Alright, Red.” And his face then almost… falls. It goes all sad and heavy, so Keith nods sharply and stands. 

Keith finds The Prince easily and fills him in on what they’ve decided. He sticks with what’s easy; he sticks with the facts. He’s too tired, now, to start any sort of argument. He could try to talk The Prince down, he knows. If he’d be successful is another whole story, but he could _ try. _

He could attempt at protesting, like the others had. Maybe it’s some tiny, sadistic part of him that holds him back, keeping him from spitting in The Prince’s face for forcing them to do this mission. At the end of the day though, he owes The Prince more than that. He owes it to The Prince to try. 

The Prince walks him halfway back to his quarters and then veers off with the hurried explanation of another imperative meeting that he cannot miss. Keith drags his feet, and he stops directly between his and Shiro’s door. 

And… God, that fucking nunvil. It always messes with his head, always makes the emotions flow to the surface. It’s alien gunk. Keith has no idea why The Prince likes it. Shiro is everything that Keith knows he can’t have. He’s light, and he's powerful. He’s a goddamn supernova, expanding through space. He’s gorgeous in a way that pales everyone in comparison.

Keith turns towards his own door, and slides through it. 

Shiro is untouchable. Shiro is the sun, and Keith is a moon, and he can’t afford to crash and burn through Shiro’s light. 

It’s the nunvil talking. Keith knows it is, but he doesn’t turn around. He can apologize in the morning if Shiro looks particularly heartbroken. Which he won’t, because Keith can’t break his heart, since Keith doesn’t have a piece of his heart in the first place. 

Keith pulls his shirt over his head and swears that he’s never drinking nunvil again. And then he looks down at his torso and thinks it would be better if he had left his shirt on. He frowns at the scars there, all the battle wounds. Or animal wounds, he thinks ruefully as he thumbs at a bite mark he’d gotten from a particularly nasty yelmore. He’s not uncomfortable with his body, not really, but there’s no way that anybody could find it attractive. He’s marred. He’s damaged. He’s consumed too much nunvil. 

Sighing, he shimmies out of his pants and thinks about showering for a second, then disregards that thought. 

He crashes in bed hard, and he spends only a few minutes staring at the dark wall, curled around a pillow before he nods off to sleep. His dreams are plagued with everything that could go wrong, but he stays asleep the whole way through, and doesn’t even wake up screaming or in a cold sweat, so he’s counting it as a win.

_ II. _

The Prince doesn’t come down to the hangar to bid them farewell as they prepare to leave. He has something deeply ingrained in him that sets him against anything related to a goodbye, Keith knows, but still - this might be the last mission they go on. 

He had checked his datapad when he woke up in the early hours of the morning, the taste of a nightmare still fresh in his mouth, to find that The Prince had already transferred over a couple hundred thousand units to his account. It’s just the upfront payment to make sure that they can get their feet under them on whichever planet he chooses to be their target, but this payment was significantly larger than any of the previous ones. 

It’s how the Prince shows he cares: throw money at things. 

Pidge and Hunk stayed up all night in the hangar, checking over everything and then double and triple checking it, and then making sure that they had a plan B for plan D, and so forth. They’re thorough. 

They’re also sleep deprived as hell and Keith hands them over two massive mugs of some coffee-energy beverage that The Prince was fond of. 

“Thank you, you goddamn gift from God,” Pidge says after taking a sip. “This is heavenly.” 

Nervous energy is layered on top of everything else, so much so that it’s impossible to ignore. The nerves aren’t what’s out of the ordinary - nerves are good. They keep you on your toes. They make it so that you don’t think twice about having three times as many backup plans as you need. Nerves are normal; nerves are necessary. 

This is different, though. 

This is anxiety, raw and electric. It’s hardwired into their brains, always, but it’s only flaring up now. It’s a giant siren flashing red and screaming “Don’t go on this mission!” while they’re packing up to do just that. Keith swallows thickly, and tries to calm his thundering pulse. 

“You good?” Shiro says, coming up behind him. He’s carrying a duffle bag stuffed full, while the rest of them only have backpacks. 

“Yeah, fine,” Keith says, and then catches Shiro’s raised eyebrow. “How am I supposed to feel?”

“Scared?” Shiro offers, and then his demeanour changes, and he leans back onto the desk beside Keith. “You ah - you didn’t come by last night.”

“Oh.” Keith fumbles for a second. If it were anybody else, he’d be able to make up some sort of story to cover for himself in a heartbeat. In front of Shiro though, he’s raw. “Sorry,” he says, and shrugs. 

“You sure everything’s okay?” 

There are about a million things that Keith could say to that. Maybe more, because no, no he’s not okay. He’s just spent the last six hours in a dreamscape living out all of his worst nightmares about losing the team, and losing his center, and it’s like all of his worst nightmares came to life. He could tell Shiro about that. Or, he could tell Shiro about how weak he feels now, or about how he’s pretty sure that he might love Shiro - might _ be _in love with Shiro - because yeah, that’s something that he realised in his head and now he has to repress it way down where it won’t ever morph into a problem. 

“Everything’s fine,” Keith says instead. “You?” 

Shiro shakes his head a miniscule amount, and doesn’t look to Keith when he says, “I’m terrified.” 

“It’s going to be okay,” Keith says, and then winces at how hard it falls flat. “We have this fancy new ship, and we’re the greatest team in the universe. If anybody can pull it off, we can.” 

“But if we can’t?” 

“Then we fuck off to some far away planet with Pidge and Hunk and become yelmore farmers.”

“Yelmores? Really, after what they did to you?” 

“I’ve overcome my fears,” Keith says with a smile. It’s supposed to be a joke, something to ease the tension in the air, but it falls flat and Shiro tries to smile. Keith can see the effort there, but the light never reaches his eyes. 

Before they know it, Pidge and Hunk give them the all-okay and they grab all their packs, bundling into the Ship. 

It’s huge on the inside. Of course, it looked large from the outside too, but on the inside it was evident just how much effort Hunk and Pidge had poured into it. Their entire hearts and souls, Keith thinks. The walls are tall, and the ceiling is opaque. Wires run along the ground, taped into the seam between the floor and the wall. The hatch takes them directly to the front of the ship, where there are two seats at the very front and then two more behind them, pushed closer together to the right side of the ship. The control panels before the seats gleam and Keith’s eyes go wide as he tries to take in the entirety of the ship. Storage lines the walls and there’s a net sectioning off a portion of the ceiling, where miscellaneous heavy-duty devices have been shoved in for storage. 

“Welcome to the Apollo,” Hunk says with a grin. 

“You’ve decided on a name?” 

“As long as it’s not shortened down to Paul _ ever, _” Pidge bites out. 

“The bunks are to the back,” Hunk says, gesturing to where a hallway splits off into a “T”. 

“There’s a kitchen and an office space, on the right,” Pidge fills in. “Bathrooms, showers, bunks and big storage room to the left.” 

“There’s more storage and an extra room that we don’t know what to do with yet on the lower level,” Hunk says. “And oh boy, just wait until you see what’s above.” 

Pidge grins. “My pride and joy - a complete self-sustaining garden. You could live on this ship off the garden itself for eternity if you pace yourself. Maybe not that long with all four of us here, but it’s not like we’re gonna be living on here once we reach Proxima.” 

Keith and Shiro go to the back of the ship after their brief tour and throw their packs onto the bunks. The bunks themselves are spacious - at least, as spacious as bunks have the ability to be on a ship. They’re a hell of a lot bigger than the ones on his and Shiro’s regular ship, that’s for sure. There’s a small window at one end of the room, and more nets stretched across the ceiling hold pillows, blankets and sheets to cover the bare mattresses. 

They’re on their way before they know it, strapped into the seats at the front of the Ship. Pidge and Hunk have, of course, taken the ones in front, and are doing all the navigation themselves. It’s nice, in a way, to sit back and watch as space streams by like a never-ending river. 

An array of knives are spread across the dashboard that Pidge has somehow voided of all buttons and controls, sleek and table-like now. Keith is leaning forwards, hands dancing over the blades. He sharpens them, and then cleans them, and then throws them up in the air and catches them in fast hands, earning a disapproving frown from Shiro, who’s sitting close by his side. 

“You’re going to take a finger off, doing that.” 

“I haven’t yet,” Keith says teasingly. “Don’t you trust me?” 

“Not with sharp objects,” Shiro says. 

“I’m being careful,” Keith says, and accidentally drops a knife tip-down. It embeds itself two inches deep into Apollo’s floor with a dull thud. 

Pidge shrieks. “Keith! I swear to god, if you hurt my baby I will feel no remorse when I throw you out into deep space!” 

“It’s… fine,” Keith says sheepishly, and Shiro raises a pointed eyebrow at him. Keith sticks out his tongue and scrunches up his nose. He leans over the side of his chair, wrapping his fingers around the handle and pulling, applying increasing pressure until it pops free. 

Then he watches, jaw dropping, as the ground re-knits itself. 

“Holy shit,” he says, quite eloquently. “What the fuck? What’s this ship made out of?” 

Pidge turns around, smirking. “Nanoparticles. It’s immune to all of your dumbass knife mistakes.” 

“Jesus fucking christ,” Keith swears, and considers ‘dropping’ his knife again, just to see how far he could push it. 

“My point still stands,” Pidge snaps, as if she’d read his mind. “I’ll let you off the hook just this one time. If it happens again, you’re out.” 

Keith pouts. “Meanie.” 

Pidge cackles and guns the engine. They fly through space faster than Keith thought was possible without a wormhole. The journey from where The Prince’s ship was stationed to Proxima should take close to a week if they’re cruising at a comfortable speed that’s fast, but not burn-out-the-fuel kind of fast. 

“Hey Pidge,” Keith says cautiously, watching as they come in view of and pass Kepler 22-b in a matter of seconds. “How fast are we going?” 

“Do you _ really _ wanna know?” she asks, and there’s pride in her voice. 

“Tell me,” Keith says. 

“Well,” Pidge says. “Just shy of mach-50.” 

Beside him, Shiro gasps, and Hunk laughs. “Fastest ship in the universe.” 

The folders lay closed in a pile, discarded, to some extent. Normally, they’d spend the flight over to wherever they needed to be hunched over the information they had, outlining brief plans in a spiral-bound notebook, on the back of an old receipt, or a napkin. This is no normal mission though, and nobody makes a move to crack open the folders. It’s a last-ditch excuse to postpone the inevitable, and they draw comfort from one another in teasing, loud voices. 

They arrive at Proxima in no time, and they wait at the necessary tourist security checkpoint. It’s a long line up, but they move through it quickly, and Keith’s palms don’t even sweat as he hands over his fake ID along with the others. After a quick scan of the ship to ensure that they aren’t transporting any illegal or dangerous goods, they’re on their way, skimming across the desert-like planet’s surface. 

When Keith asks about how they managed to clear the Proxima border agents’ scans, she replies with something offhand about her new tech, and Hunk just grins and nods along, but doesn’t offer up any additional information. 

They make short work of the flight to the two-bedroom apartment that The Prince secured for them beforehand, and Pidge carefully pilots the ship down into the underground parking area. 

Most of the planet’s inhabitants live underground - the entire museum's underground. The weather is as unforgiving as a raging ocean, great wind storms whipping sand across barren planes. The wind is strong enough to pull buildings down. For that reason, the buildings are built low, and they sink into the ground where the underground colony thrives, teeming with life. 

The apartment is a small place, and the first thought that Keith’s hit with is that it’s cozy. 

There’re two bedrooms and a small living space equipped with a kitchenette tucked into the corner and a fireplace with massive stone bricks pressed up against one wall. Two curved, leather-looking couches face the fireplace, and on the beige wall above them hangs a mirror, on either side of which are small, six-by-six paintings of flowers - juniper berries. On the other wall are sliding glass doors to the small balcony outside, covered in a thick layer of dust. A small hallway leads to a bathroom and little cupboard space with a washer and dryer. 

Keith takes this all in within the first thirty seconds of poking around and then tosses his copy of the folder onto the coffee table between the two couches. Hunk immediately heads to the kitchen area and unloads various fruits and meats into the fridge. 

Pidge pushes open the balcony doors and a gust of wind blows the navy-blue curtains streaming across the room. She gives a little disgruntled “Hm” at the dusty state, but seems to approve enough of the overall atmosphere. She unloads a small cluster of plants from her basket, tucking their square pots right up against the building so that they won’t easily be blown over. 

They get their stuff unpacked in the common area and then Hunk takes the initiative to check to see when the museum closes. 

“We have like, seven hours,” he says triumphantly. “We should head over there to uh, case the place.” 

“Not at all to just look at the pretty art,” Pidge teases. 

“Not to see what kind of restaurants are around here, either.” Hunk chuckles. 

Keith pinches the loose white fabric of the Led-Zeppelin graphic-T he threw on this morning, and frowns. “We’ll have to get changed,” he says, looking pointedly at Pidge’s pajama pants, which are bright pink and covered in fluffy white sheep. 

“I don’t see anything wrong with this!” Pidge protests. “It’s comfortable.”

“We’re on one of the richest planets in the entire known universe,” Shiro says, raising an eyebrow. “Not only that, but also the art capital. Maybe putting on something a bit more… civilized would be appropriate.” 

Keith slings his backpack over a shoulder and heads off towards one of the two doors that leads to a bedroom when he’s fully hit with The Prince’s fatal mistake in choosing this apartment. Pidge and Hunk are dating. Which, good for them. They’re cute. They work amazing together, they’re the universe's greatest power couple, yada yada yada. 

But they’ll take up one bedroom - which leaves… 

Which leaves Keith to share a room with Shiro. 

He mulls this over in his head, takes a deep breath, and decides that it’s okay: he can handle that. It’s fine. They’ve shared rooms in the past. It’s no big deal. He accepts his fate, turns the doorknob and pushes open the rickety old door, sees that the bed is not quite the size of a queen, and takes back everything that he’d just come to terms with. 

With a sigh, he unzips his backpack and dumps out all of its contents onto the bed, his carefully-rolled clothes and a few paperbacks landing with a dull thump. 

He peels off his t-shirt and replaces it with something much more suited for the planet that they’re on. He puts on tight jeans, a white button-down sheer shirt, and a flowy black jacket that reaches mid-thigh and has a bit of a collar. He tops it off with heavy black leather boots with a little heel. He even goes as far as to flip his hair up into a bun and reach into the front pocket of his bag to extract a mascara wand, which he’s never quite mastered, but he smears some onto his eyelashes anyway and calls it a day. 

He leaves his things in a pile in the middle of the bed and doesn’t bother with maintaining some semblance of organization from the get-go, leaving his old clothes in a rumpled heap on the sand-strewn wood-paneled floor. He vaguely thinks about maybe cleaning it up later, and then leaves the room without a backwards glance. 

Shiro stands in the doorway, one arm raised as though he was about to knock, and his eyes go wide when Keith catches them. He’s spacing out, Keith can tell instantly, from the way his eyes go all wide and his body freezes up. Is he having a flashback? Keith leans forward, concerned. 

“Shiro?” he says softly, trying not to be jarring. 

“Yes. Uh. Keith. Yes, hello. Hi - hey. You look… art.” And then he nods like he just said something coherent, and his face turns a nice shade of red. 

“Yeah…” Keith says slowly, face crumpled in concern. “We are going to go look at art. Are you okay?” 

Shiro blinks, and then waves him off. “Yeah - I’m fine.” 

Keith smiles at him a little, his lips curling up at the corners. “Alright.” 

They get ready quickly - dressing up into something much more appropriate for their surroundings. 

Shiro wears slacks and a dress shirt that he leaves unbuttoned at the top. It’s a deep, rich purple and fits his large frame so well that he must have had it tailored. It clings to all the right spots, namely his wide shoulders. Pidge wears a short green dress and cropped leather jacket, and Hunk, beige slacks and a faded jean jacket over a dark green polo shirt. 

“We clean up nicely.” Pidge nods curtly, grinning. 

“No more sheep pajamas here,” Keith says. 

“No teasing, Mr. Graphic-T.” 

“There is nothing wrong with graphic T’s!” Keith says sharply, and he’s about to launch off into a spiel about fashion and how a Led Zeppelin t-shirt is a hell of a lot better than neon-pink sheep pajamas, but he’s cut off abruptly by Shiro’s hand on his shoulder, clasping tight. 

“Let’s just head out,” he says, raising a pointed eyebrow at Hunk, who grabs Pidge’s hand and tugs her out the door. 

The building that The Prince had rented a room for the team from is middle-to-low class by Proxima’s standards, which means it’s on the higher end by literally everybody else's standards. The hallways from apartment to apartment are paved with glossy tile and a lush red carpet streaks down the middle of it. Periodically there are skinny, tall tables pushed up against the walls, holding vases of fresh-cut, fragrant flowers. The lighting is both soft and bright at the same time - it seems to be almost natural, but comes flowing from small lights embedded into the walls.

Keith falls into step beside Shiro as they walk to the elevator, which takes them down past the parking and all the way to the street. 

Proxima climate is harsh and their cities lie underground, even though most of the buildings come up above ground at some level. Their apartment is on a higher level, so they even get access to a balcony, which is a rarity. 

They’re not hit with how brilliantly lavish the city is though, until they leave the hotel and step out onto the cobbled streets. 

And there - there’s too many things to look at, really. There’s too much to take in, so Keith looks up first, towards the place where the sky should be on any other planet.

There’s a mockery of a sky hanging up there. It’s an illusion, Keith knows. It’s nothing but magic - Altean, probably. Allura had mentioned something about her people doing government-sanctioned work here a millennia or two ago, after all. The Alteans were one of the very few species that would actually be able to pull something like that off - because it looks so realistic. 

It’s a pale, dusty blue, much more vibrant that Proxima’s own dark brown sky, thick with swirling sand. White shapes float across his vision - wispy clouds. He breathes in and it almost feels like the summers he used to spend growing up as a child, on one of the rare occasions that his mother would demand time off and they would escape to a beautiful, flowering planet for a week or two. For the life of him Keith cannot remember what the planet was called, but he does remember quite vividly the sky, and the scent of fresh flowers and honeydew. 

The building’s exteriors are works of art as well - but even calling them simply works of art seems dull in comparison to how gorgeous they actually are, carved meticulously out of marble, built up with warm tones of bricks, embedded with plant life. 

They pass a building covered completely with swirling colours and Keith is able to identify it as _ Starry Night, _one of his first favorite paintings. There are other massive works of art covering the buildings, but Keith can’t seem to put his finger on what they’re called. He knows the general realms, based on the theme, complexity and sometimes simply the colour pallet. He’s sure that Shiro could name about half of them, and if all four of them put their heads together they could probably assign a name to each of them. There are hanging baskets of wild-looking flowers in archways, and pleasant, soft music flowing from an open door. Music classes. 

Keith… Keith has a hard time taking it all in, and he's not ashamed to admit that. It’s overwhelming. Money is everywhere, wealth is everything. It’s the polar opposite of everything that he’s familiar with. 

He was born fighting and he was trained to kill - to punch his way out of anything, no matter what. He didn’t grow up around a forgiving group of people and even though he’s surrounded by friends now, all that they had known too was a hard, difficult life where they’d had to fight until their chests heaved and their knuckles stung with the blow of each impact. 

This here, in the heart of Proxima - this is everything that Keith’s world hasn’t been, for the longest time. 

The wealth - the frivolous displays of _ money _are almost sickening to see, when he knows how many people even a fraction of that wealth could help. It could end wars and poverty. It could save planets, help tear down the human trafficking trade. Instead though, it’s held here. Captive. 

It dances across every surface, but all Keith can see is the people that it could help, somewhere else, sometime else. He peers into the passing shop windows - there’s a bakery, elaborate cakes piled on top of one another, gold trimming around the doorframe, and pristine windows. 

These people - the ones passing them on the street, beautiful aliens, delicate and tall, skin varying in colour and saturation - have never known a day of hard work. They’ve never had to wield a knife, never had to hold anything between their fingertips with any more danger than a paintbrush. They’re protected here, in a way that Keith never was. How old was he when he took his first life? And how old was he when he decided that if it came down to it, he’d rather lay down his own? He tries to think. He tries to remember, but draws a blank. Ten rotations old? Or closer to eight? 

Keith doesn’t feel underdressed - he’s fitting right in, in that department. They all are. But he does feel ridiculously out of place and he tugs at his sleeves and frowns at the ground, until Hunk is nudging him and Keith is thrown out of his head. 

Right. This is a mission. This is routine. This is not the time to dwell upon the universe’s issues. 

He puts his shoulders back, raising his chin. He walks with an easy swagger and closes his mind, easy as ever, easy as breathing. It’s nothing to him, the disassociation, the distance. It’s a coping mechanism. It’s been burnt into his mind, ingrained into his soul. He can be anything with the change of a walk, the switch of a disposition that he plays with as though it’s sand, flowing through his fingers. He's not an actor, no, because an actor knows who they are under all their shells. 

And Keith- 

Keith is still just a shell. There’s something there, maybe. But it’s dull and toned down, lost somewhere in empty space, born out of the loss of both his parents and his entire culture, his entire being. 

Right now he is the image of a tourist, an artist, a good person, a frivolous person. Right now, he is who he almost wishes he had been born as in the first place. 

They pass a show advertising exotic animals, and Keith coos at a long snake-like creature in the window, wrapped around a decorative tree branch. It’s beautiful, all warm tones of brown and red, melting into each other like a desert. 

They almost lose Pidge when she catches sight of an old-timey record shop, hard music playing quietly from the sunken door. 

“I wanna go in!” she says, when they don’t stop at the windows. “Oh my _ God - _ I think I see a Queen album. _ Queen.” _

“From Earth?” Shiro asks curiously.

“_ Yes, _” Pidge says, and glares when they still don’t turn around. “We’re stopping there on the way back home, or else y’all can fight me. To the death.” 

“We need to have time to go through the entire gallery,” Keith says, rolling his eyes. “It might not even be open on the way back.” 

“We’re going to be here for a while,” Shiro says soothingly, always the hero. “I’m sure you’ll get to go there.” 

Pidge grumbles something that sounds suspiciously like some sort of death threat in Cinzak’s language but she lets it go after that, and mocks Hunk later when his eyes widen almost comically when they pass a bakery with a lovely fresh bread smell wafting from its opened door. 

“That’ll be a nice place for breakfast,” he says, excitedly. “That’s good bread.” 

They pass a piano store and Keith is almost ready to agree to Shiro’s pleading eyes and go in, just to take a look around, if it means that he’ll be able to hear Shiro play. 

There aren't many rules to the job. Really, they can make rules up as they go along, easy as can be. They’re founded in logic and embedded in instinct. But the one rule that they’re supposed to always keep to is the most difficult: stick to the plan, no matter what. 

This part is the easy part - resisting the undeniable _ want _to give in to the cravings and gallivant around a city as wealthy as this one, because it’s a massive playground to them at the end of the day. It’s easy, though. It’s simple, because these shops will still be standing here when they’re on their way back from the gallery, and if they don’t make it to all of them by then they’ll be able to poke around the next day, or the one after that. The Prince hasn’t given them an explicit time limit, but it kind of goes without saying that he’ll want it done as soon as possible, within reason. 

No, the only time when it’s really, truly hard to stick to the plan is when something real is at stake. 

Like the last mission they went on together, where everything that could possibly go wrong did go wrong. They all got too attached to the wrong people, and in the end it was like ripping off a billion bandaids at once, when they had to leave. 

When they had to betray. 

It would have been fine but it wasn’t, because Lance had fit in with them so well, falling into their easy mocking and teasing, flirting shamelessly and always being free to vent to. 

It was a shame, really, that things had gone the way they had. 

God, he needs to get out of his mind. He hates thinking like this. It’s better, after all, when he’s actually executing the missions, because he can then allow adrenaline to completely take over him and he doesn’t have to do much of anything except move fast and viciously. 

“It’s strange here, huh?” Shiro’s voice is low, ducked next to Keith’s ear. 

“Yeah,” Keith breathes, his words caught up in the exhale. “It’s too… perfect.” 

The aliens walking past them are gorgeous. They’re tall, lanky. There’s not much of a baseline to their species, as with the ever-growing population and the planet’s openness to refugees the species has become so muddled that it barely even exists anymore. The diversity is beautiful, the way that no matter the shape or colour of the alien - from blob-like, bright-pink to warm earth tones and cool icy ones, tall, finned, scales, furry - they all hold themselves with a sense of elegance that Keith wishes more planets had. It looks so pure, so gorgeous. 

Where Keith grew up, people held their wealth in their pockets, not sewn onto their clothes. Where Keith grew up you had to walk hunched over, scuttling between crowds, running from something that he never cared to identify properly. Maybe it was his parents’ ghosts, or maybe it was the ghost of his own past self.

It matters little now though, as they approach a grand archway leading to the museum. A vast garden grows before its entranceway, and Pidge pauses to peer curiously at the bright roses. 

Gold fountains lie intricately between the bushes, and there’s some benches too that peaceful-looking aliens sit at. It’s quiet, beauty woven between the threads of space. 

_ III. _

There’s a neat row of metal detectors across the wide room that they enter into, and they are immediately funneled into the shortest of the lines. Keith grabs a map of the building as they walk through the detectors and feels a wave of relief wash over him when it doesn’t pick anything up. A dagger’s cool sheath is pressed up against his thigh but Allura’s wards hold, as it is. 

“Where to first?” Hunk asks, eyeing the elaborate “food-court” area that looks to be more like three five-star restaurants all squished into one room. 

Keith unfolds the map, holding his arms out wide. “Uh.” 

“Look for the green rooms,” Pidge says. “Earth stuff is usually green, right?” 

Keith tilts the map to the side and slows to a halt. “Is it?” 

“What language is that?” Shiro asks, peering over his shoulder.

“Fuck if I know,” Keith says. “Should we ask someone for help?”

“No no no,” Pidge snaps. “C’mon, we’re all at least moderately smart. We can figure this out.” 

Keith brandishes the map in her direction, with too many bright colours and too much squished-in script. “You do it, then!” 

“I didn’t say I could do it.” 

“Let’s just walk,” Hunk says. “We’ll find it eventually.” 

“There’s a good plan,” Shiro says, and starts off in a random direction, Hunk in tow. 

“Do we follow them?” Keith says lowly.

“I dunno.” Pidge squints at the map. “Maybe it’s there?” She points to a green splotch. “I can’t read it very well. It could be talking about Kepler.” 

Keith tilts his head. “Or… Modjav?” 

Pidge frowns, and then looks back in the direction of where Hunk and Shiro are rapidly disappearing in the crowd. “We could just follow them.” 

“Yep.”

The floor is glass. Under the glass is gold. It’s disgusting how clean it is - how crystal clear. It makes Keith sick, kind of. Massive 30-foot floor-to-ceiling windows look upon the city outside and giant skylights are somehow dust-free as they glare out at the atmosphere. The ceiling's paint, all warm, swirling colours, complement the dusty sky perfectly. 

They walk for hours at a slow, unbothered place. At some point, Hunk grabs on Pidge’s hand and they walk a little ways away from Shiro and Keith, though still staying in complete view. They sink into the crowd, blending into the life that they are not a part of - the life that they are so _ apart _from. 

“It’s beautiful,” Shiro says when they find the Earth exhibit. 

_ The Storm on the Sea of Galilee. _

“That’s an understatement,” Keith mutters, glancing around the room quickly, nonchalantly. There are five guards. _ Five. _It’s stupid, really, for a room with only a few paintings and a sculpture of a twisting naked man. 

But it is beautiful and it feels wrong, somehow, to rob this place of something so gorgeous. 

The only objective of day zero is to get a general overview of the place; it’s to fade into the backdrop and observe how the gallery operates on any normal, run of the mill day. 

But on a normal day there are five guards and cameras observing every single angle. On a normal day there are more security measures put in place than on any other museum’s roughest days. Five to a room, Jesus. They’re going to have their work cut out for them. 

They stay in front of the painting for as long as the other tourists do and then melt away again. The security guards don’t bat an eye and Keith’s thinks, blearily, that even if they did zero them out from the crowd there’s no way that they’d be able to apprehend them. 

There’s an art to sinking into the backdrop and it’s an artform that Keith has completely mastered over the years. This was helped by his training with the blades and only amplified when he met Shiro and the others. The guards’ eyes don’t catch on them and Keith grins to himself smugly, watching the exits, counting the entrances. 

Though he’s technically working and shouldn’t get all caught up in the crowds and the exhilarating... He can’t help but catalogue the beauty of it all and thinks vaguely of how it seems shitty to take something away from this. Here, beauty belongs. Out in space - even on The Prince’s Ship, with its vast lavish amenities - something of this caliber wouldn’t really fit in. Not properly, at least. There’s no way that it would be able to fit into the world outside of this building. 

The museum was created for works like this - so breathtaking that there’s no alternative home. There’s no other option for the works, no better place for them to be. Here, they are safe. Here, they are cherished. 

Or worshipped. 

He didn’t notice it right off the bat, but when he watches the tourists, he gets an uncomfortable, grainy feeling below his skin. Some look upon the paintings with awe. Some look upon them with greed. 

Belatedly, Keith wonders where he fits into the scale. Do his eyes appear hungry, or are they free and light? He catches his reflection in a painting donned with shards of angry mirror glass and all he can see is a stranger. 

“You good?” Shiro says from beside him. “You’re all spaced out again.”

“Yeah - sorry,” Keith mutters, blinking hard like he can get his mind straight. 

“Stay here on the ground, yeah? You spend so much time in space,” Shiro says, with a smile that makes his eyes crinkle around the edges. 

“Okay, Space Boy,” Kieth says, because it’s the automatic response, because that’s all he can say, all his mind can formulate. God, he’s a mess. He’s not usually this much of a mess so early on in missions. 

Shiro snorts and knocks their shoulders together. “Look at that one over there.” He points to the other side of the room where there’s a bright, nearly-neon picture of a-

-A llama

“Holy shit!” Keith says. “Is that really what I think it is?” 

Shiro grins all warm and bright. “Yep. Looks like we really are good at our job.” 

“What the fuck,” Keith says again, because holy shit. “I didn’t know that it was going to end up here of all places.” 

Right before him, staring straight into his eye, is the replica of the llama painting that he and Shiro stole so long ago. It’s a perfect replica - The Prince got the best in the business to make it, of course. Shay just so happened to also be one of Hunk’s closest friends and had chosen her line of work instead of falling into it, like the rest of them had. Shay even went to a prestigious school dedicated to restoring and replicating works of art. She graduated top of her class and now goes under a pseudonym and works for the highest bidder, unlike Keith and Shiro, who work solely for The Prince. Hunk and Pidge drift around as far as unemployment goes but they stick close to home. 

They don’t get to see the effects of their work unless it’s heard along the grapevine, murmurs and blaring wanted notices. The Prince seldom updates them on the impact that they're having across the universe and Keith likes it that way anyway, because he doesn’t need to see the soul-crushed, blank stares of the victims. 

The Llama painting was one of the most memorable ones because it was his and Shiro’s first solo mission, and they had almost been caught. They had gotten the painting in the end but it had been one hell of a wake up call. 

It’s not a nice painting. Well, sure, okay: it got into the Ordphis, so that has to count for something, but it’s not as nice to look at as literally any of the other works of art. The colours clash too much and it looks as though the artist changed their mind on what the background would be at least ten times, never fully committing to painting over the previous layer completely. The Llama itself, standing proudly slightly to the left of center, is painted three different colours and is not properly proportioned in any sort of way. 

It’s a disaster. Keith loves it. 

He gets it - the artistry, the indecisiveness. It’s a disaster but it’s _ him _. 

Shiro laughs. “Still like it, then?” 

Keith shrugs and his face heats up. “Maybe a bit.” 

They wander through the rest of the exhibits, milling between crowds. They stop in a large empty area, a room open but secluded from the rest of the gallery. The ceiling is donned in shades of blue and gold, depicting an alien species that Keith can’t name. Statues line the walls and the windows are high up so small squares of light fall across the golden floor. 

In the center of the room is a small group of people gathered around a woman painting. They are enthralled, barely even blinking as this woman paints. 

Quietly, Shiro and Keith edge forwards, slowly so as to not disrupt the carefully-crafted peace that the group has achieved. 

When they get close enough to see the art, Keith gets it immediately. He _ understands _ why these people cannot do so much as blink because the artist is nothing short of a _ goddess _. 

She is slender, with rich blond hair cascading down her shoulders. She wears a light pink dress and it’s tight in all the right places. From this angle, Keith can see blue marks on her face and it clicks into place - she’s Altean. 

She is painting the carcass of her planet as it was seen to be in its prime. She is painting a ghost, but it looks as alive and as beautiful as the artist. She is painting Keith’s heart. 

Keith doesn’t want to move, doesn’t want to tear his gaze away from the hues of deep blue clashing with a bright periwinkle. He doesn’t want to lose this: the peace, the quiet, the serenity. 

They do leave though, eventually, even if Shiro has to wrap his fingers around the crook of Keith’s elbow and steer him away wordlessly. Finally they break through the crowds of people and Keith remembers that they are trying to steal a painting, not fall in love with the works of art being created. 

They catch up to Pidge and Hunk quickly, ducking through some exhibits until they reach the final one dedicated to paintings created on Proxima itself. 

These paintings are different from the others in that one is clearly able to see the way that their artists draw from every other genre that came before them. They are simply bits and pieces of everything else, melded into one. It’s beautiful in a way separate from all the others, because the art seems to move, seems to follow them around the room. Very seldom are they portraits of any sort of creature with a soul - instead, they depict rolling hills alive with cascading grass, or galaxies, the stars of which seem to almost sparkle, changing depending on the position of the observer. 

It messes with Keith’s mind, making him second guess everything because a painting of a meadow shouldn’t be able to invoke this level of emotion - a sort of yearning, deep in his sternum. 

The gift shop is huge, filled to the brim with all sorts of keepsakes. They walk around slowly, taking a good look at everything. Pidge picks out a print of the Llama painting and raises an eyebrow at Keith. Shiro grabs a pack of candies that apparently taste like how looking at paintings feel - or at least, that’s what the label summarizes. 

The man at the till is tall, loud, and completely brilliant. 

“Wonderful day, eh?” he says with a grin.

For a planet and civilization that is supposed to be extinct, there seem to be quite a lot of them in this building. Maybe the gallery collects people as it does art. 

“It is!” Pidge says, all falsely cheery in a way that Keith can tell is an act, but strangers wouldn’t know anything to be amiss. 

The man is wearing a paint-splattered apron and grins at all of them like they’re his best friends. Hunk picks up a small cube from a display, fiddling with it. 

“Is this an olkari cube?” he asks curiously.

“Why of course it is, dear boy!” the man says, plucking it from between Hunk’s fingertips. He presses an invisible button on the top, tosses it up into the air and says, “Coran, Coran, the gorgeous man!” 

The cube does nothing for a second, and then a tiny voice parrots back, “Coran, Coran, the gorgeous man!” 

Pidge laughs and Hunk grins sheepishly. “I’ll get it,” he says. 

Coran snaps his fingers and says jollily, “Sold! To the dashing man!” 

Pidge laughs again and Keith’s eyes catch on a bright yellow flyer whilst Coran rings their items up and declares their totals. 

“You’re hiring?” Keith asks casually. “Is it a long term thing?”

“Long term and short term, sir,” Coran says. “Depending on what you’re looking for: you can find it here.”

Keith sinks into a different demeanour, further exemplifying the character that he’s created. He relaxes his shoulders more, raising his chin and brushing the hair out of his eyes with the back of his hand. “I’m Keith,” he says. “What kind of thing are you looking for?” 

He plays up the charm, almost considering batting an eyelash or two, until Coran sets up an interview date and Keith promises to bring his resume by the next day so that they can look it over. Coran doesn’t let them leave without a free sticker pack, which Keith accepts with an easy smile. 

Keith’s always thought of himself as a pretty physically fit person. And for the most part, that thought holds true. He can deadlift 800 lbs and run forty miles without a break, courtesy of his Galran stamina and strength, but even he’s exhausted by the time they get back to their apartment and he immediately throws himself down onto the couch, groaning when his face hits a dust-covered pillow. 

“My legs have never been this relieved,” he says closing his eyes. “Holy shit.” 

“Think about how _ I _feel!” Pidge snaps, nudging Keith over so that she can sit beside him. “I’m half your size and I don’t think I’ve ever willingly worked out in my entire lifetime.” 

“I need a nap,” Keith says. “And cake. Nap and a cake, please.”

“It’s almost night time anyways,” Hunk says. “May as well just stay up for a few more hours and then crash.”

“Hunk’s right,” Shiro says. “I know it’s weird being on a different planet with a different timezone and everything, but we need to try and adapt. We’re all sore.” 

“That’s his way of saying we need to get over it,” Keith whispers to Pidge. “Cause he’s a meanie.”

Shiro sighs. “I heard that.” 

Keith sticks out his tongue. “Nuh-uh. You didn’t.” 

Hunk shakes his head slowly. “Okay, children. I’m going to go get us some food - I saw an Earth restaurant just down the street.” 

“Don’t call me a child.” Pidge wrinkles her nose. “That’s weird on so many different levels.” 

“Oh God, don’t leave me alone with them,” Shiro groans, pressing a hand to his forehead.

“There is no God here,” Pidge cackles, and Hunk gives Shiro’s shoulder a little pat. 

“Sorry buddy,” he says. “The little birds need to eat.” 

“Still weird!” Pidge explaims as Hunk turns to leave, and then, “Love you!” 

“You too,” Hunk says, and turns around long enough to shoot a soft smile in Pidge’s direction. 

“Love you too!” Keith says sickly sweet, just because he can.

Hunk rolls his eyes and blows a kiss over his shoulder. 

“You guys are menaces.” Shiro shakes his head, sitting on the couch opposite them. “Complete menaces.” 

“You like it,” Pidge says. “We’re your favorite.” 

“No, Hunk’s my favorite. He’s getting food.”

Pidge sighs all dreamily. “He is pretty great, isn’t he?” 

“Hey!” Keith squeaks. “Someone could at least pretend that they like me.” 

“But Hunk’s bringing us _ food, _” Pidge says cheekily. “What do you bring? Sarcastic comments and a grouchy face.”

“I take back what I said before,” Keith says. “_ You’re _ the meanie.” 

“Finally! A true statement.” 

“At least you accept it.” 

“Accept it? No, I flaunt it.” 

“Oh of course, I’m so sorry that I didn't say anything about it before!” Keith gasps dramatically, pressing the back of his hand to his forehead and tilting his face toward the ceiling. “How silly of me!” 

“Now you’re on the right track.” Pidge grins. “The next step is bowing down before your Queen.” 

“Shay? Of course, always.” Keith cackles at Pidge’s incredulous face.

“No, dumbass,” she says.

“Speaking of being dumbasses,” Shiro pipes up. “Anybody think of any ideas from our walk through?”

The mood sombers some and Keith kicks his legs out onto the coffee table, resting his head on the back of the couch. “Nada.” 

“I think it’s pretty clear that our usual angles won’t be effective,” Pidge grumbles. “At all.”

Shiro nods. “It’s too wide scale.” 

“Not even that,” Pidge says with a frown. “We’ve hit huge galleries before. We’ve hit busier galleries before-”

“This one is different,” Keith cuts her off, “because there’s _ too much of everything _. If it was just busy it would be fine. If it was just big then it would be fine. But it’s - it’s in the middle of literally everything. The entire city is built around it and there are five guards to a room, three times as many in other rooms with thousands of tourists going through every day. Thousands.”

Pidge nods. “There’s a reason nobody’s ever been able to steal from here before. I wondered about it, and sure, I kinda doubted it before. Not much, but still. Cause like - why wouldn't _ someone _ be able to get away with it? Maybe a person with magical abilities? Shapeshifting, hypnosis. Something. We know they’re out there, so why hasn’t anybody been able to do it before?” 

“Because,” Keith fills in for her, “it’s the one thing that nobody can touch. They’ve blocked every exit; they scan every entrance. We’re already twelve steps behind them and they don’t even know they’re playing the game yet. What happens when they realise what we’re going to try to pull off?”

“...We’ll be destroyed,” Shiro says, and then drops his head to his hands. “I know, I saw it too. I just- I really hoped that someone would get something.” 

“Maybe Hunk’s got it all figured out,” Pidge says with a shrug. “He’s smart.” 

“He’s not our strategist,” Shiro says.

“We’re all part of the team,” Pidge says firmly. “We all work together. You know this.”

“Of course.” 

Pidge gets up, grabs The Prince's folder and a thick, leather-bound notebook. “We’re going to figure this out.” 

“We have to,” Shiro says.

“We’ll get it,” Keith says in what he hopes approximates reassurance. “We’re the best thieves in the universe.” 

Pidge cracks open the notebook and writes on the top of the first page in big, bold letters:

_ To which we shall reach our demise. _

And then, underneath: 

_ (The Storm on the Sea of Galilee) _

“It’s even my nice notebook,” she smiles. “I’ve been saving this one.”

“For what?” 

“For whatever heist is gonna get us killed. I want to bury this somewhere and have a lost kid find it one day in a million years and fall completely in love with my memory.”

“_ Our _ memories,” Keith says quickly. “All of our ideas are going in there.” 

“Yeah, yeah.” Pidge waves him off. “As always.”

“Okay,” Shiro says. “What do we know about stealing paintings?”

“Well, before today, I thought that I had a pretty good idea of how, but it turns out I’ve been nothing but a fool this whole time,” Keith says with a sigh. “Maybe I should explore alternate career options.”

“With what resume?” Pidge snorts. “Your entire life has been built around illegal activities.” 

“I’ll make one up!” Keith protests. 

“So you’ll live a lie for the rest of your life? How nice.” 

“Oh shut up. Try to think of ways to not get us killed.” 

They spend too long throwing absolutely useless ideas at each other. No matter how incredulous they are though, Pidge jots them down in her notebook, if for nothing else than to cross them out and write _ Keith’s idea _next to all of them, which is unfair on many levels but most of all being that at least half of the ideas were said by Pidge first. 

Hunk comes back to save them from their misery before they fall too far and they’re occupied for a short amount of time by eating as much pasta as possible. 

“What about law enforcement outfits?” Keith says. “We can say that we’re responding to a distress call and tie up the guards, take the painting and then get out of there in three minutes flat.” 

“I... I am astounded by your stupidity,” is all that Pidge says, and then she suggests fake mustaches, so really their levels of stupidity seem equal at best. 

“We could just walk up and grab it off the wall in the middle of the day.” 

“Or recreate a scene from that one Earth book - what’s it called? _ Elder Thieves _?” 

“No, I think it’s _ Elders Who Break Rules _.” 

“_ The Little Old Lady Who Broke all the Rules _,” Hunk says. “A classic.” 

“Yeah! That one.” 

“None of us are old enough for that. We’re too young and beautiful,” Shiro mutters, sounding like he’s losing his will to exist faster than the wind whips over Proxima’s desert. 

“We could use that to our advantage, too,” Pidge says.

“Seduce the gallery owner!” Keith calls out.

“Yes, because that’s logical,” Hunk deadpans. “That’s worse than getting a pack of yelmores to do it for us.”

“A pack of _ wild _yelmores,” Shiro says, raising an eyebrow. “Wild yelmores, Keith. Is that what you want?” 

“Anything but that.” Keith shudders. “Maybe we should just do that old lady thing.”

“I don’t know, seduction seemed like the right way to go,” Shiro says, voice thick with sarcasm. 

Silence lapses over them for a moment and then Hunk says lowly, “Let’s face it guys… we might not be able to pull this one off. It’s so wildly out of our zone of expertise. None of us even know where to start. I could call The Prince, talk to him about maybe reconsidering this. Maybe there's a different painting that he wants, somewhere not on the planet, maybe.”

“You know we can't do that,” Shiro says, and there’s sympathy in his voice because isn’t that what they all want - to get off this planet and go somewhere with a layer of security and the knowledge that even if they do get caught, they won’t be able to be tried for death?

“The Prince has too much on us,” Keith says quietly. “At least, he does on me - not even counting the heist stuff. He would take me down in a goddamn heartbeat. He wouldn’t even need to raise a hand. I have - I’m not a - I haven’t spent my life doing the greatest things. You all know this.” 

“We’re all in the same boat,” Shiro says, voice hushed. “There is only one option for all of us. The sooner we accept that the better.”

“He’s not a bad person,” Hunk says, tilting his head. “I think he tries to do what is right.”

Keith snorts. “He was good once, maybe. But this universe has a way of turning everybody ugly at some point or another, no matter what. It’s not like we all asked for this. He - well, you all know him, but I’ve known him the longest, yeah? I _ know _ him, and take my word for it when I say the guy is terrified of what happens if he loses control. It doesn’t matter how much he needs us, or respects us, or dare I even say it… likes us. If he thinks that we’re any sort of a threat, he won’t hesitate.” 

“None of that will even matter if we can’t pull off this heist,” Pidge says.

“The impossible heist,” Hunk groans, burying his face in his hands. 

“Yeah,” Keith says. “Fuck.”

No matter how hard they try, nothing comes to them. There’s not a single idea, not a whisp or a strand - nothing to cling to. They finish the food and sit in despair for several minutes before Keith gets up, gathering the dishes and filling the tiny sink with hot, soapy water. 

He likes keeping things tidy. It helps clear his mind. So he scrubs pasta sauce off of the plates, stares out of the little window above the sink and feels the water burning his forearms. 

There’s no possible way that they can come out of this on top. There’s no reality anywhere where they’re able to pull this off because it’s not meant to be _ possible _. One would have a better chance at reversing the effects of gravity, at this rate. Tech for that already exists anyway, shifting the molecular components down to the atoms to change the density of objects. 

That’s possible. That’s a tangible thing that exists in the world, that has science around it with isolated variables - a controlled experiment. 

This, though. This heist, this everything.

There is no control. There are no experiments. There is nothing beyond losing the fight, losing the war. The Prince offered them something that they can’t refuse: a sum of money so massive that they could turn their backs on this life completely if they wanted to. Hell, they could buy an entire planet and create their ideal world. Pidge could finally create and launch a ship to look for her brother. Shiro could rebuild Earth - the planet that he loves so much but is so far away. 

And Keith… Keith’s not sure what he could do. There’s nothing that he wants selfishly because… 

Well, there’s nothing waiting for him on the other side of this life. He never really entertained the idea of leaving The Prince behind and forging his own path through the stars. He couldn't go back to the blades, not after what happened to his mother. His father is a dead end: six feet under, leaving no family behind other than Keith. He doesn’t have any skills to fall back on, doesn’t have a way to connect with anybody else. 

All there is, for him, is this job and the people he gets to do it with. 

Beyond that is an expanse of nothing so infinite that it makes his stomach churn and his eyes burn. 

They need to get the heist done. They need to be able to solve the impossible, to power through the mire - because if he can get through this heist, maybe he can hold the team together. Maybe he can stop them from falling apart, and if they do-

-If they do all leave him, then he would still have The Prince by his side. That needs to count for something, right?

It’s stupid, this primal urge in him, pushing him past his limits, throwing him into the deep end. The Prince is testing them because he wants something, and he has the power to manipulate them and burn through them to get whatever he desires, consequences be damned. 

If it were a year or two earlier, Keith might have said that The Prince genuinely cared for them. 

It’s a good thing he’s not that naive anymore.

Methodically, Keith goes through the motions: pulling the plug in the sink, running water over his hands to wash the soap away, grabbing a tea towel, drying the dishes and stacking them back in the respective cupboards. He pulls mugs out, pops open the lid on the kettle, and fills it with lukewarm water. He plugs it in, presses the start button, and digs out some dusty tea. 

He drops a tea bag into the pot and leans on the counter, waiting for the kettle to whistle. 

He pours boiling water into the teapot, shuts the lid, and balances everything across his arms, placing them on the coffee table. 

“Thanks,” Hunk says, and Pidge calls him a gift from God. 

Shiro smiles, small but bright, and moves over on the couch a fraction of an inch, patting the empty space beside him. Keith sits down, grabs a throw pillow and tucks it against his chest, drawing his knees up and curling into the corner of the couch. 

“Any ideas?” he asks, hoping for the impossible.

“I like the seduction idea,” Pidge says, but her smile is strained. 

“We can do this,” Keith says, and is surprised at how confident his voice comes out. “It’s just going to be a waiting game. We have no time limit on this-”

“Well, probably before the solstice,” Pidge cuts in.

“So we can take out time,” Keith continues. “I’ll get the job, and work that angle. We just have to get comfortable with this place.” 

“Why does The Prince even want this one?” Pidge grunts, pouring herself some tea and splashing a droplet onto one of the museums blueprints. 

“Because he can’t have it,” Hunk says. “It’s impossible for him to ever have, so it’s all he wants.”

From beside Keith, Shiro shrugs. “It’s a beautiful piece of art.” 

“All of that art in the gallery is beautiful. Why _ that _one specifically? What’s so goddamn special about it?” Keith says.

“It’s his style,” Pidge says. “He likes art that’s full of emotion. He likes - he likes storms.”

Keith sips his tea and lets it burn his tongue. Their conversation dulls and fades and Keith feels so, so exhausted. It’s only the end of day zero and he already feels like he needs a break. 

Sunset comes in a fiery sky and it casts clusters of red-and-orange hues along the far wall which distort across the mirrors, bounce off the glass and land in a crescendo, dancing across the ceiling. It’s beautiful in the way that sunsets always are, and wild in the way that foreign planets always feel. 

They don’t hang out for much longer and Hunk calls it a night after jerking awake with a snore. Shiro calls it quits not that much later and Keith hears the shower turn on a few minutes after he leaves. 

Pidge is stretched out along the couch on her back, holding her notebook above her head. 

She mutters, “They have too much security. The museum’s too big for going through walls. The planet’s too flat for going through the ceiling. The city is too densely populated for blowing anything up. The people are too nice to feel good about doing it.” 

“You talking to me?” Keith asks.

“Thinking out loud,” she says, flipping to the next page. “Too many people, walls too thick, security too good, paintings too big…”

“Wanna run away with me?” Keith asks, only half-paying attention. 

“Nah, Shiro would be too jelous,” she says, and then, “Why the _ fuck _ do they have so much security? They have twelve thousand security guards on their payroll. Who the fuck needs twelve thousand security guards?” 

“Fight clubs,” Keith says, numbly. “Jus’ ask Shiro.”

“Oh man that is one can of worms that I definitely do not want to open.” Pidge flips to the next page of her notebook and looks like she’s about to jot down an idea, but doodles a flower in the corner instead.

“We have… absolutely nothing,” she says a moment later, sighing and drawing a tiny little sad face next to the flower, two dots and a curved line. 

“I have that job,” Keith says.

“Not yet you don’t.” 

“Well I will, soon.” 

“What if that angle doesn’t pan out? What the hell are we supposed to do? Storm the place and hope for the best? We’re good, Keith, but even we can’t go up against all these guards.” 

“We’ll figure it out,” Keith says, and wishes that he could feel half as confident as he sounds. “And hey, if all else fails, we’ll just pull a Mona Lisa.” 

“I thought we agreed on no seduction.” 

“Well then, that yelmore idea. That could work in a pinch.” 

Pidge writes _ Yelmores _ in bolded letters on the top of the page and below, on the first line, she writes, _ con #1: Have to be in the presence of yelmores, _ and then, _ con #2: Keith would always have to be near yelmores, and he complains about yelmores. _

Keith laughs and Pidge crosses out _ Yelmores _with a satisfied smile. “You have been overruled.” 

The sun has dipped down completely by now and shadows are cast around the room, catching on the corners. 

“We’ll figure it out,” Keith says. “It’s only day zero, it’s not like we’re supposed to have a fully-formed 150-step intricate plan for us to go by.” 

“I guess,” Pidge says, and sighs. “Yeah.” It’s late, and they’ve been up for too long.

Keith nudges her shoulder. “We’ll think of something. We always do. You should get some sleep, though. We can worry about this all tomorrow.”

She opens her mouth as if she’s a second away from trying to protest, but closes it and sighs again. She nods slowly and pushes herself up, tossing her notebook onto the coffee table, on top of the already-overflowing mass of papers and notes. “You get some sleep soon too, alright?” 

Keith waves her off. “Yeah, yeah. In a few minutes.” 

Pidge huffs. “Night owl.”

“Says you,” Keith quips back. 

He does stand soon thereafter, stretching his arms above his head until his back pops, and then he sets to tidying up the table, pushing the papers into piles and throwing Pidge’s notebook onto the ledge above the fireplace where she’ll be able to find it easily the next morning. He gathers the mugs up and turns on the small yellow light above the sink as he washes them out and sets them out to dry. 

He double checks all the locks, makes sure that the curtains are drawn and has a shower before he realises that he doesn’t know where to go. He stands stupidly still in the hallway for probably too long in an old faded T-shirt and flannel pajama bottoms, towel slung around his neck and water dripping from his hair. Keith pushes open the door to the bedroom where he left his things and hears Shiro’s soft snores. He assumed that they would share it, but now he’s not so sure. Shiro went to bed first and now he’s sprawled across the whole thing - it’s not like there’d be any room for Keith even if he tried to crawl in there. What if Shiro assumed that Keith could take the couch, as he is the smaller of the two and would be able to sleep there better than Shiro ever could? 

It’s not like he and Shiro have never shared a bed before. In fact, they usually do whilst on missions. It’s just more convenient. They do sometimes on The Prince’s ship, too, and even on their own ship if one of them is having a particularly rough night, which isn’t out of the ordinary in the slightest.

He’s stolen from the most high-ranking military officials in the universe, hunted down bounty that had kill counts in the thousands, and yet this makes him more unsure than any of that ever did. 

He stands still for far too long, then spins on his heel and plops himself down on the edge of the couch. He fluffs up the throw pillows in the dark and pulls one of the knitted blankets down from the back of the couch, curling up in one of the corners. He pulls the blanket tight around him. For a planet that’s almost completely a desert range, it sure does get chilly. Then it turns downright cold, and Galra have always run a bit cold, always had to huddle up when it drops below freezing, and grow thicker fur in the winter months back on their mother planet. Keith shivers a lot.

Eventually, he falls into a restless sleep.

He tosses and turns, his legs getting tangled up in the blanket. He slips between dreams and nightmares and lets them eat at him.

He’s torn from his dreams by a hand on his shoulder and he’s up before being awake, acting without thinking. He has the person halfway to a chokehold before he comes back to himself, feeling the sharpness of reality replacing the dullness of a dream, and he drops his hands, stumbling back. 

“Shit,” he says, and the couch knocks out his knees. “I’m sorry.” 

“It’s fine,” Shiro says. “I didn’t realize it was a bad night.” 

_ A bad night, hey? _

When they first met, every night was a bad night. Every night was one where one or both of them would wake up with a half-formed scream on their lips, in a bed on The Prince’s ship that they weren’t used to yet and with that clinical scent in the air that felt like hospitals and warships alike. They had their own rooms, sure, but there was safety in numbers. 

“I get it. That one’s on me,” Shiro says and smiles, open and relaxed, like it’s no big deal. “Why are you out here, Red?”

“I-” Keith is still stuck somewhere in that cagey feeling. He’s still coming down from it, his heart still aligning itself in his chest, below his ribcage. “I just-” He stumbles, doesn’t catch himself in time, doesn't right himself. He blinks, breathes. 

Shiro’s hand flinches by his side, like he wants to reach out, and is about to before he remembers himself. Like he has to restrain himself from grabbing Keith’s shoulder again. 

“It’s fine,” Shiro says again, and gives Keith another one of those smiles that he hands out too freely, another one of those smiles that Keith doesn’t deserve. “Let’s just go to bed, hey? It’s chilly out here. You never sleep well in the cold.” 

Keith nods and stands when Shiro takes a step back. He follows him down the hallway through the mass of shadows and crawls in on the left side of the bed, the side that has always been his to have. Shiro slips in on the right side and pulls the covers up high over the both of them, and God - it’s so warm. 

“Goodnight Keith,” he hears Shiro murmur into the darkness, and it warms him even more, making butterflies go off in his stomach at the care in Shiro’s gentle tone. Keith means to say goodnight to Shiro, means to say thankyou, but it’s so warm and comfortable and his eyes grow heavy. It’s so easy to be lulled into sleep with the sound of Shiro’s gentle breathing. It’s a familiar sound, and a grounding one at that. 

Keith means to say goodnight, but he falls asleep instead. 

His dreams beforehand were overlain with anxiety. He was being ripped to shreds with animals in deep forests, claws dragging him back, mouth refusing to open to yell for help - not the worst that he’s had, but certainly not something that’s easy to shake off. His mind now though is gratefully blank, a safety washing over him like an ocean’s tides. It’s not a foreign feeling when it comes to sharing a bed with Shiro. 

He wakes up slowly, dragged from sleep by nothing in particular, his heart staying steady and calm as he presses his face into a warm heat, curls his hand around a bit of fabric, and keeps his eyes closed. It’s so warm, and more comfortable than any bed has the right to be. He’s caught in a half-waking state and doesn’t bother to open his eyes or try to ground himself, just letting himself fall headfirst into the feeling of being safe. It feels good until he comes back to himself completely and- 

And _ oh shit - _

His head is not rested on a pillow. His hand is not fisted into the sheets. The weight under his leg is not due to 

the blankets getting all twisted up under him. It hits him like a punch to the gut- 

He is completely, and undeniably, cuddling the shit out of Shiro right now. _ Shit. _

A tactful retreat would probably be best. No, it _ definitely _would be best, but all Keith does is jump back. 

He doesn’t even try to untangle their limbs in a strategic way - just rocket-launches himself out of bed as quickly as is physically possible for the human body to do without ripping all of his muscles to bits. 

Boundaries. 

Boundaries are good. Shiro volunteered to share a bed, not to become Keith’s personal cuddle buddy. And yeah - yeah, they’ve woken up close to one another before. But not like _ that, _ and certainly not when Keith was feeling those… those _ emotions _towards Shiro, like some dumb schoolgirl crush. He’s not like that. He doesn’t feel those sorts of things. 

Shiro grumbles in his sleep and rolls over to the side, arms wrapping around a pillow and a pout taking over his face. Keith thinks, _ I should get back into bed, _which is not an acceptable response. So he frowns to himself, grabs his bag, and leaves. He closes the door quietly behind him. 

“Rise and shine motherfucker,” Pidge deadpans. “Coffee me.” She’s laying on the couch, glasses slightly askew. She’s holding her notebook in front of her nose and glaring hard enough to give herself a migraine if she keeps it up for much longer. 

“God, I forgot how awful you are in the mornings,” Keith grumbles, trudging his way over to the coffee maker. “Remind me never to go on missions with you ever again.” 

“Ha!” she says. “It’s cute that you think we’re gonna make it through this one.” 

He points an accusing finger at her. “We,” he says, raising an eyebrow, “are keeping a positive attitude.” 

She snorts. “Like that’s gonna last for long.” 

“What’s not gonna last?” Hunk asks, walking down the hallway and making a beeline for the kitchen. “Coffee?” he asks, and Keith gestures towards the coffee machine. 

“Keith thinks that we can keep a positive attitude.” 

“We can try,” Hunk offers, grabbing a mug from the top cupboard and pouring milk and sugar into the bottom of it. “You never know, maybe we’ll be good at it.” 

“Yeah, no,” she says, and then, “Are you going to make breakfast or are we going out?” 

“There’s a bakery down the street,” Hunk says. “Or I can make - uh…” He opens the fridge. “Food goo?” 

Pidge scrunches her nose up. “Let’s go out.” 

Proxima’s morning is bright even though the curtains have been drawn across the windows. It cascades in waves through the room, stitches onto the far wall and sends Pidge’s shadow streaming far out behind her as she faces the window. There’s piles upon piles of papers already and it’s barely day one.

It’s going to be a rough mission. 

Keith knew that from the very beginning, ever since he realized that Pidge and Hunk were on The Prince’s ship. There aren’t many missions these days that warrant the attendance of all four of them. Learning that it was Proxima was bad and now that he’s here, on Proxima in all of it’s rich pride and glory, Keith frankly feels a bit sick. Because _ yeah, _keeping a positive attitude is fine. It’s good. It’s ideal, but it’s not realistic in any way. They can try, but Keith already feels it wearing thin on day one, looking at the piles of notes and crumpled up bits of paper with stupid, dumb ideas. 

Keith pours the coffee and burns his tongue when he takes a massive gulp of it. 

When Shiro wakes up he drinks the mug of coffee that Keith presses into his hands in about five seconds flat. 

They head down to the bakery later, all dressed up in bright frivolous clothes that any other civilian would wear. Between the four of them they try pretty much everything on the breakfast menu and Shiro wipes them out of about half their pastries, taking them to-go when they’re ready to leave. He even orders an entire goddamn peach-custard pie for pickup the next day from a very disgruntled baker who looks like he wants nothing more than to strangle Shiro for taking all their baked goods at the very beginning of the day. 

They spend the day walking around the shops, getting boring touristy pamphlets from the information center and checking out the stores that they didn’t have time to the previous day. The record store is a hit - it has a whole sub-division of Earth tech, mainly focused around music but they have an impressive collection of movies and video games as well. They practically have to drag Pidge away from them, and even then she gets two games and Shiro manages to snag a record before Keith can stop them. Hunk has his own moment at the intergalactic supermarket, where he loads up on new and exciting foods. There’s a knife shop that Keith practically begs to go to, but Shiro puts his foot down and says that it might be suspicious. 

It’s still a good day though and they catch up with each other properly, joking around loudly and obnoxiously. 

It’s when they get back to the apartment that they’re hit with reality, sitting amidst a sea of maps. Keith moves the coffee table to the corner where the kitchen is and they shift the couches so that they’re pressed up against the walls. Shiro rolls up the carpet and lays it in the hallway, where someone is absolutely going to trip over it later. 

They sit together in a rough approximation of a circle, and Pidge gets out some blank pieces of paper and markers to fill in the gaps as they lay out the maps. At some point Shiro opens the deck doors to let the fading sunlight and fresh desert air in, and Keith breathes in deep, trying to focus. He puts on music after a little while to fill in the gaps between conversation so that the room feels a little less empty, so that they all feel a little less lost, staring out at a sea of uncertainty. 

They get a pretty decent map laid out before the sun completely dips below the horizon and then Pidge pulls out her laptop to hack her way through the city to fill in the gaps. 

They’re going to need to know everything that the city has to offer. 

Every corner, every camera, every business has to be mapped out - they have to know about it. 

“Any ideas?” Keith sighs. 

“We might just need to give it some time,” Shiro says. “See what comes up, y’know?” 

“If you get that job then we’ll have some leverage,” Hunk says. “Being on the inside is always helpful.” 

They stay up late into the night and then head to bed frustrated, unable to come up with anything substantial. But then again, it is only day one. They’re not expected to have everything formulated. They’ve done other hard missions that had them doing practically nothing for months on end, simply waiting for an opening. 

When Keith wakes up wrapped in Shiro’s arms again, he extracts himself carefully and goes to make coffee. The whole time he’s making it he’s busy trying to whipe a dumb smile off his face, and he’s so wrapped up in how it felt being held by Shiro that he dumps coffee grounds in his mug instead of the garbage.

He’s just glad that Pidge isn’t there to witness it. She’d never let him live it down. 

He gets the job and dials up his smile tenfold, grinning from ear to ear at customers and sweeping his hair back so that it’s tucked behind his ears instead of falling across his face as he usually allows it to. He works with Coran most days. It’s easy work. Occasionally he’ll get a rude customer and he thinks about all the ways that he could make their life a living hell if he wanted to, which helps calm him to some extent. 

Keith gets flighty three weeks in. It happens on most missions that run for a long time - that’s not the foreign part of it. The foreign part is the way that it’s been three weeks and they have _ nothing. _They have the exact same amount of intel that they did on Day Zero. 

They have nothing, and it’s not _ Keith’s _fault, but he feels like ne needs to constantly be doing something, needs to be moving, running his knuckles together or rolling his shoulders. 

“You okay there, Red?” Shiro asks one day, and the smile fades off his face so fucking fast that Keith almost gets whiplash. 

And, yeah. Yeah - he could lie, probably would, if it was any other mission, or if they were closer, or if he didn’t feel like there were insects underneath his skin, crawling through his veins where his bloodstream should be. 

“Not really,” he says and stands from the couch, stretching his arms above his head just to hear the joints pop. He grabs the dishes from the table just for something to do. 

“You gonna talk to me about it?” Shiro asks, and he stands up behind Keith, following him to the kitchen like some sort of lost puppy. 

“It’s been three weeks,” Keith states. 

Shiro nods and crosses his arms over his chest, leaning a hip against the counter next to the sink. 

“And we have fuck all,” Keith says, and then. “Usually we’d have _ something _ by now.” 

“We’ve been on missions lasting months before,” Shiro says. “This one’s just going to take a little bit longer, yeah?” 

“Or we won’t be able to complete it at all. And then The Prince will tell the universe who we are and we’ll be running for the rest of our _ lives _.” 

Shiro gives him that look again, the one that Keith gets all caught up in if he’s not careful enough. If he doesn’t watch himself he can feel himself slipping towards Shiro, like he’s a black hole and Keith is a star that is slowly being sucked dry and swallowed whole. It’s a look that seems to embody words that shouldn’t ever be spoken between them. Something like, _ Maybe running won’t be so bad, if it’s with you. _

God, this is getting out of hand. Keith shakes his head, trying to stop projecting himself onto Shiro. 

“I’m just... _ God. _ I don’t know. I feel like I’m _ stuck.” _

“We should spar.” 

Shiro says it like it’s not a big deal, like it doesn’t carry the weight of the world in the way that it can help unravel the knot of tension that’s coiled so tightly in Keith’s chest. He says it like Keith deserves a release, like he shouldn’t have to live feeling stuck and lost and floating somewhere between having done something and doing something actively again. 

Keith heaves a sigh of release, breathes deep. 

When they spar, Keith gets mean. It happens sometimes, or most of the time, and Shiro never tells him to calm down, doesn’t bark orders at him besides the sharp, “Patience yields focus!” when Keith jumps too early. He gets all caught up in the adrenaline and the way it feels to get his hands on Shiro, to push his body around and watch as he defends himself with cat-like precision.

Keith fights mean; that’s just how he is. It’s how he was trained, it’s how he learned: in a military base, against opponents that were forever bigger and stronger. 

Shiro loses himself completely in a fight, though. It’s impossible for anybody to catch up to him because he doesn’t leave any openings, doesn’t offer the opponent any chances. 

Keith can let himself go, let himself get mean in a way that he can’t when it’s Hunk or Pidge because he knows that Shiro will be able to take it in stride. He knows that Shiro will take every hit and deal them back like he’s not afraid of hurting Keith. There are limits, of course. Keith doesn’t touch the shoulder of the arm that Shiro lost and Shiro doesn't block Keith’s field of vision, doesn’t blindfold him or cover his eyes. 

They have weak spots. Sparring isn’t the time to address those spots. It isn’t the time to breathe through the panic and pain and work the body into something manageable. 

Especially not know, when Keith fights like he needs it to breathe and Shiro stands there, takes every single punch - sometimes too much like a punching bag, with that goddamn awful pitying look on his face. Keith gets rid of it soon enough when he can make it clear to Shiro that he means it, and he needs something that will fight back, let him get all of his energy out so that he can stop pacing and his mind can find some sense of quiet. 

They don’t come back from the desert for a long, long time. 

When they do stumble back into the apartment, their knuckles are bruised and Shiro has a split lip. There’s a bruise blooming as a flower does just below Keith’s ribcage and they are coated in a layer of dust, like most things on Proxima are. 

They take turns in the shower and Keith lets himself fade in and out of consciousness on the couch while the others grumble and argue over scraps of paper that are supposed to be able to help them pull off something impossible. The ideas that are thrown around are not new ones and the room grows tense and frustrated. Pidge stomps away at one point, pacing through the room with a felt tip pen, drawing dots and putting stars next to certain papers and connections. Every sentence that starts with, “What if we…” is responded with, “That’s not going to work.” 

“It’s just a waiting game,” Hunk says, and it appears as if his positive outer layer is crumbling like the rest of theirs has. They all crumble, over time. “Okay? It’s just - just a game, and we have to wait it out.” 

“Wait for what?” Shiro says. “Nothing’s going to change. Their sense of normality isn’t going to spontaneously switch. We’re… we’re stuck here, for now.” 

“This sucks.”

“It hasn’t been too long, yet. We’re still at the beginning, any other heist wouldn’t be further along by now.” 

“With any other heist we would have an idea of what we could do! We have nothing for this. Actually, we have less than nothing. We have less than we came here with.” Pidge brandishes her notebook, with a page of crossed-off ideas. “We’ve marked options off. For any other heist we’d have at least one unmarked option.”

Keith’s tired from his and Shiro’s sparring match. His eyes close. 

“We’ll think of something,” Shiro says. “We’re the best around. We always think of something.” 

“And what if we don’t?” Pidge asks.

“Then we wait until we do.” 

“Look… I know that it’s early yet, but we need to talk about what’ll happen if this thing doesn’t work out. It’s not like we can just go back to The Prince and say, ‘Hey, this heist didn’t really work out. Sorry mate, better try finding different thieves to carry out your tasks?’ Like, that’s not gonna work.”Pidge says.

“If we run from The Prince he’s going to chase us. If we defy him, he’s going to tell the universe who we are and then we’ll be running from all of them as well. If we don’t get the painting he’s going to tell the universe who we are. And I - I know that I've lived a pretty shitty life so far. But I had hoped that one day maybe I could settle down and, y’know, do the whole ‘normal person’ thing. That’s only going to happen if we get this painting.” Hunk says.

Pidge says, frustrated, “which is an impossible task.” 

“There has to be something.” 

“I’m not saying that we should give up. I’m just saying that maybe… maybe we need to think about what our future is like if this doesn’t work.” 

“We’d be as good as dead. Running your whole life isn’t any way to live. We’ve all done so much running, right? I’m tired of that shit, I really am. I wanted to take The Prince’s money from this last one and then fuck off to a corner of the universe where I can live happily - find something to build, alright?” 

“That’s only going to happen if we pull this off.” 

“Then that’s what we’re going to have to do.” Shiro says firmly.

They trickle to bed one after the other and Keith burrows into the pillows, pulling the blankets high up above his shoulders, balling them up against his chest. 

“Your stomach feeling okay?” Shiro asks, and his voice is tired but his eyes aren’t when Keith rolls over to look at him. 

“Just bruised. How’s your lip?” It’s late and he’s tired, so that’s probably why he does it. He reaches a hand towards Shiro’s face and cups his palm against Shiro’s chin, gets his thumb to his lips where he runs it over the cut, feels the warm flesh and slightly raised scab. 

“Not bad,” Shiro says against Keith’s hand. “It felt good to spar, hey?” 

Keith lets his hand fall. “It did. We haven’t done that in a while. I'm getting closer to beating you.” He snuggles further back under the covers. 

“Don’t steal all the blankets,” Shiro chides and pulls some from Keith’s grasp, getting himself situated close enough to Keith that he can feel the warmth radiating off of his body. “You could be beating me,” Shiro replies, “but you always pull your punches near the end of the fight.” 

“No I don’t.” 

“You do.” Shiro smiles. “If you really wanted to win, if you really, really wanted to beat me, you could. I’ve seen you take down guys twice my size with half the effort that you put into sparring with me.”

“All those other guys don’t know how to fight like you do,” Keith says, and his face heats up. He’s glad that it’s dark enough to melt into the room as the shadows do. 

“You’re a fantastic fighter,” Shiro says. “Really.” 

“Not as good as you.” 

“I doubt anybody around here is as good as me,” Shiro says, and his face crumples into a frown, “but that’s not a good thing. I was forced to be like this. I was tortured and conditioned, manipulated and used.”

“I know,” Keith says, and it must be the darkness that’s allowing them to speak so candidly to one another. 

“I can fight like this because it’s what I was used for, and when I couldn’t fight they’d make it so that I could.” The bed shifts when Shiro flexes his metal arm. “They took from me and built me up to be a monster. I was their champion and they used me as a killing machine, Keith. I was a death sentence, and the worst part of it is that I didn’t try to fight them about it.” 

“You did,” Keith says, and he means it to be comforting, but it falls a few miles short. “You got out of there. You’re not like that anymore.” 

“I can be. I can fall into that so easily that it feels like the goddamn default, sometimes. But I know - I know that you’ll catch me if I slip up. You and Pidge and Hunk. I know that I can count on you guys to hold me accountable so that I can keep being better.” Shiro takes a deep breath, like words are hard to form. “But even with all of that, you could take me down. I’d let you, I think. But - you choose not to.” 

There are words caught on the tip of Keith’s tongue. They’re something along the lines of: _ I don’t want to hurt you, _ and, _ If I beat you then it means that I don’t need you anymore and I do - I do need you. _

“It’s late,” is what Keith says instead, and then, “Goodnight, Takashi.” 

“Yeah, sweet dreams, Red.” 

For the first time in a very, very long time, Keith doesn’t dream of anything at all, and when he wakes up he lays in Shiro’s arms for a few beats too long just because the feeling of Shiro’s heart beating so steadily under his hand is soothing. He lays there and feels Shiro’s body beneath his own, the rise and fall of his chest and the steady thud of his heart, and he doesn’t mean to, but he drifts back off to sleep all the same. 

He’s prodded awake later by a hand on his shoulder, rubbing gently. “Hey,” Shiro says, when Keith blinks his eyes open. “Good morning.” 

Keith’s heart stutters in his chest and damn near stops, because Shiro is _ awake _ . Shiro is _ awake _, and he’s not pushing Keith away, he’s not throwing Keith out of bed and telling him to fuck off all the way back to The Prince’s ship. He has a hand on Keith’s shoulder and another on the small of his back, and the smile that he gives to Keith so freely is as bright as the strongest star in the entire universe, in the way that it lights up the room and ignites something akin to affection in Keith’s body. 

“Have a good sleep?” Shiro says, and it’s soft, and his words are liquid cascading around Keith, cradling him close. 

“Yeah,” Keith breathes, and stops trying to hold still. He lets himself melt, molding to Shiro’s body properly. “Yeah, you could say that.” 

Shiro chuckles and his chest rumbles. Keith smiles, but it’s hidden in Shiro’s T-shirt. 

“I always forget how much of a cuddle bug you are,” Shiro says, and he sounds fond, like that’s an emotion that he can have in relation to Keith. 

“You love it,” Keith says, and he should move, he thinks. He should have moved a long time ago. He _ should _ have jumped out of bed before Shiro woke up but it’s too late for that now, and he’s never not been selfish. Not really. 

Maybe it’s okay, to hold on to this. 

Maybe it’s alright, to want things like this. 

“I do,” Shiro says warmly. “I’m definitely not complaining.” 

“What’s on the itinerary for today?” Keith asks, not making a move to stand up. He will in a second, and that needs to be enough. 

“You and me are doing a walk through,” he says. “Pidge has some tech that she thinks might be able to help us out, so she’s going to be fiddling with that in the ship all day. Hunk’s going through the town again. I think he's going to try to find some intel that we don’t already have.”

“We haven’t found anything new since the second day,” Keith says. “There’s not much to this place.” 

“Today might be the day for a breakthrough.” Shiro rubs at Keith’s shoulder and it feels like he’s trying to pull Keith closer. “You never know.” 

“Yeah, but what are the chances?” 

“Well, I suppose they’re pretty slim, but there’s no harm in trying, right?” 

“At any rate it’ll be nice to go to the gallery and not have to work.” Keith smiles to himself. “We’ll have to find that Piano room that Coran was telling me about.” 

It’s not much later when they drag themselves out of bed and pull on clothes that Keith is starting to feel claustrophobic in for the sake of blending in with the general tourist population of Proxima. Pidge has already disappeared off to the ship and Hunk must’ve gone with her for the morning, because he’s nowhere to be found, but there’s half a pot of coffee left over on the counter. Keith pours it into two mugs and makes Shiro’s up the way that he likes it just so that he can press it into Shiro’s hands and feel Shiro’s fingertips brushing against his own. Shiro throws him another one of those smiles that makes Keith feel like he’s drowning or flying and murmurs a thanks between sips. Keith rifles through the pile of maps (declared so with a yellow post-it note written on with large bold red letters saying MAPS on the top of the pile) to find the one that Coran sketched out for him on the back of two receipts stapled together with vague instructions on how to get to the piano room fastest. 

The day is good. Keith gets to listen to Shiro play, gets to listen to the sounds of his notes all strung together, high and perfect. Sometimes he sings, but today he is silent, head bent and shoulders swaying as he always does when he gets lost in the feeling of the sounds. 

And Keith- 

_ God _, Keith wishes that all this were real, for a moment. 

It doesn’t last long. It’s fleeting as smoke but regardless, for a solid couple of seconds, Keith thinks that if he had been born to this planet, if he had found Shiro with music in his mind instead of bloodshed, and if they had fallen together surrounded by works of art instead of knives and thieves, then they could be this happy - this _ carefree _ \- all the time. 

But it’s not real, and Keith doesn’t hold on to the idea of it all long enough for it to take hold and sink in. 

It’s a good day. 

It’s a bad night. 

He feels all flighty when the sun goes down. Pidge, Hunk and Shiro are all gathered together, throwing propositions around and drinking copious amounts of coffee to keep themselves going through the night. Maybe if it gets late enough the right plan will just fall into place all on its own, without the pressure of the theives’ impossible errand. Keith sits with them for a while, longer than he should last at any rate, but eventually he can’t avoid it and he paces, until that doesn’t do it and he throws on a jacket and grabs his data pad. 

“I’m going out,” he says, looking straight at Shiro, who looks like he’s moments away from jumping up and going with him. “I won’t be long,” he says, and Shiro stays sitting. 

None of this is new to him. If it was, maybe he would have tried harder to stay, or maybe Shiro would’ve chased after him. This is a normal occurrence, feeling stuck in a mission and needing to _ move _, to get out of the small spaces and feel the wind through his hair and find some sense of purpose. It happens on most missions but doesn’t on some, which is fine, too. 

He gets out of the city and jogs out through the desert. 

The roar hits Keith like a suckerpunch to the gut. He hears it in his bones and it reverberates through his entire being, flooding through his bloodstream and shaking the ground. His first instinct is to duck down, to press himself half to the ground, and scan his eyes across the flat of the desert to see where such a monster could possibly be coming from on a planet such as this one that appears so unassumingly peaceful, filled to the brim with wealth and prosperity. 

He looks and sees nothing. It is dark but he has good sight, and the plains are so flat that it’s possible to see for miles around him. 

He hears it again - it splits the quiet like thunder and Keith blinks. It is not the roar of a beast. No, this is the roar of a crowd. This is a roar fueled with excitement and adrenaline. It shakes the ground and his hair stands on end. 

If he heard it in any other part of the planet, it wouldn’t feel so out of place. The city has lavish parties all night long that are loud and busy, lighting up the city and sending waves of music and chatter cascading in rolls throughout the city. 

But the thing is - he’s not in the city. He’s many miles out, far enough that the city is nothing but a dim glow on the very edge of the horizon. He’s in the middle of the desert and he’s studied maps of Proxima, he’s looked over the blueprints of the entire planet, he’s poured over every nook and cranny because it’s what he’s being paid for - it’s what he needs to do in order to find something even just approximating a plan. 

But on the maps, this desert is empty. 

On the maps, this desert is uninhabited. 

On the maps, nothing out here exists. _ He _ doesn’t even exist, here. He’s just a speck in the sand, barely even distinguishable. If he got lost out here, if he forgot his way back home, nobody would stumble over his bones. The sand would bury him and not even Shiro would know what happened to him. 

But why then, with those facts standing, does the ground rumble as if it is alive? 

He doesn’t find the entrance on purpose. In fact, he’s just about to turn around and call it a night - the adrenaline has faded from his veins and his bones have grown weary from his searching. The double moons of Proxima have moved far through the sky since he started his search, and then he’s stumbling over a handle sticking out of the sand and he thinks_ this is it _. And then after that, he doesn’t think of much at all. 

He opens it, walks quietly down the spiral staircase, and is hit with the stench of blood when he opens the second door. 

He’s been in places like this before - arenas, with drains in the floor and chanting aliens surrounding the cage. He creeps closer, slips between aliens that he can’t name, goes towards the bar off to one side, where he perches on the edge of a stool and asks for a water. 

“Doesn’t look like your type a’ scene,” the bartender says, and she’s Galra through and through, in the smooth silkiness of her voice and the yellow gleam to her eyes. “I’m Acxa.” She offers up her name like it’s not something that she needs to hold close to her. Like she doesn’t care if people know who she is. She is, Keith knows instantly, extremely dangerous.

Keith shrugs. “What makes you think that?” 

“Well,” she drawls, and pushes her hair back with one hand. “You’re dressed like every single one of those other sick fucks on the surface.” 

“Am I?” He holds out a wrist, looks down at his suit. “Huh. Haven't been here for long and they’ve already got to me.” 

She smiles like he’s said a funny joke, and says, “Where are you from, then?” 

“Momaro fleet 70092,” Keith says. “Few galaxies from here.” 

“Galra, huh?” 

“Halfblood,” he says. “You could say that I never really fit in.” 

“Been running towards some idea of a home for how long now?” she says, and Keith bristles. 

“What about you?” He flashes his teeth, and straightens his back at the roar of the crowd and the clash of something sharp slicing through thick skin. “Let me guess - Zarkon’s planet, then when you realised he wasn’t going to give you what you wanted you took a job from a competitor and he’s been hunting you down since, so you hide under a fuckin’ desert in the Golden Planet?” 

She raises an eyebrow. “You seem to have me all figured out. Personal experience?” 

He snorts. “Personal avoidance.” 

“Smart,” she says, and her eyes are bright. “Let me get you something a bit stronger to drink after my shift is over?” 

“Nah,” Keith takes a sip of his water. “I’m good.” 

She nods. “Good for you. I have to ask you though - you’re not watching the fight. You’re not here to drink, and it doesn’t look like you’re trying to get work. So, why are you even here?” She levels him with a sharp gaze and reminds Keith suddenly of his mother. 

Keith runs his fingers over his cufflinks and flashes his teeth at her, and it’s not quite a challenge but definitely reaching the point of being something of a warning. “I’m here for work.” 

Shiro had been kept at a place like this, back before The Prince granted him some sort of bargain-fueled salvation. It was kind-of like this, but it wasn’t just underground - it was the whole damn planet resting on the outskirts of a galaxy revolving around a dying star, massive and red, only a few hundred years away from an inevitable supernova. That planet had been like a festering infection, spreading to other planets as its days grew shorter. That planet had taken Shiro’s arm and all his soft edges, and dug its claws so deep into Shiro’s flesh that the scars run both along his skin and through his mind. Though it doesn’t happen as often anymore, Keith knows that Shiro still wakes up heaving and gasping some nights, or his shoulder will ache so much that he comes to Keith with tears in his eyes and a sob in his throat, falling into Keith and begging for some kind of solution. 

Keith hates places like this. The roars of the crowd make his hair stand on end and his skin itch. 

It might be a fun sort of sub-mission, something to do when he feels all cagey and stagnant, to tear down Proxima’s underbelly, rip it apart and cauterize the wound. 

There’s a sickening sound of an alien dying and Keith doesn’t look - can’t look. God knows he’s done worse things than what happened in the walls of the arena to better people but he knows, deep in his heart, that if he looks up into that cage, all he’s going to see is the ghost of who Shiro used to be. And Keith - Keith is strong, but he doesn’t think that he’s strong enough to deal with that, not right now.

It takes a few days for Keith to go back. He pushes himself to help Pidge and Shiro and Hunk more, who give him easy smiles and copious amounts of coffee in return. 

Somewhere between arguments and frustration, they throw together a half-developed plan that holds up for a few hours before they pick it apart, and try to start building it back up. 

Keith’s job at the gallery is boring, as they always are. Coran is really nice though and Keith can’t help but spend most of this shift smiling if Coran’s there. 

Each night Keith crawls into bed by Shiro’s side and marvels at how he’s able to share a space with someone as beautifully untouchable as he is, and every morning he wakes wrapped around Shiro’s massive frame. He stops pulling away completely, eventually, and allows himself the comfort of basking in Shiro’s brightness. Shiro always wakes up with a grin and sometimes, when he thinks Keith is still sleeping, he’ll run his fingers through his hair. 

On the fourth night, Keith goes back under the desert, and he puts on something more fitting for the occasion. Something dark, leather boots with studs and a pretty sheath for his favorite knife so that it can rest comfortably on his thigh, on full display for those whose eyes catch on his frame - which turns out to be a lot of eyes, when Keith starts paying attention. His hair has fallen across his eyes, but he doesn’t duck his head - he walks forwards, with purpose. 

The first step in tearing anything to the ground is getting close to it. He walks close to the cage this time. He hears a punch land and doesn’t flinch. He catalogues the entrances and exits as easily as others breathe and he watches for anybody who might be an issue. He sees some rough-looking guys, watch dogs let off their leashes and itching for a fight. The same Galran bartender is handing out drinks but she looks bored tonight, eyes staring but not really seeing. 

There are people that The Prince probably knows, all dressed up with showy grins in a warrior’s formal attire. 

He forces himself to stay unreactive amidst the forced fighting. He keeps his eyes away from the other creatures. _ I’ve done worse things, _ he reminds himself when the smaller alien’s body is smashed against the chain link fence. _ I’ve done worse things, _he tells himself when one of them gets a knife to the gut. 

_ I’ve done worse, _he thinks, when he hears the sound of a bone breaking in two, splintering, edges pushing against taut skin. 

_ I’ve done worse, _he thinks, when one gladiator deals the killing blow. 

He was born into a war fleet and then spent years drifting through the universe like a lost comet, working for whoever was offering the most, falling deeper and deeper into a pit that he knew there was no coming back from. 

He was a thief, sure. He did other things too, though. 

And then The Prince found him, and it’s still on the morally ambiguous side, but he’s kinder than other employers had been. 

He gets a job after standing by the edge of the ring for almost thirty minutes. It doesn’t look like much - just a bounty hunt, a large enough prize to make it somewhat worthwhile. He doesn’t ask any questions and the guy doesn’t ask anything of Keith - just hands him an old photo and gives him a name. He says that he’s on the planet, and that Keith has an entire week, which is somewhat of a joke, so Keith finds the guy on the second day and spends the rest of the time following him through the underground, letting him be an unknowing guide. On the seventh day Keith delivers the alien to the man who hired him, and he doesn’t realise what’s happening next until there’s a splash of blood against his clean clothes, and he gets his fists in the man’s shirt and flings him against the wall. 

“What was the point of that?” 

The man chokes and spits, and there’s a body on the floor, and the blood _ stinks. _

“He owed me money-” The alien coughs. “-You understand, I’m sure. Let me go.” 

Keith has been following the dead alien. He had a daughter. He drank his way through the underground every damn night and stayed away from the shadows like they were out to get him. “Give me,” Keith says, flashing his teeth, grinning a wolf smile so big that he sees the man’s hair rise, “one good reason to keep you alive.” 

“I-” The man looks trapped, and his eyes race. “I have very powerful allies that would hate something to happen to me.” 

“Names?” 

The man spits, thrashes, like he’d be able to get away. “Let me go.” 

“Give me a name,” Keith says and tightens his grip. 

“The- The Prince,” the man gasps, finally. “The Pr-”

Keith slams the butt of his knife so hard against his head that he drops unconscious instantly, limp. “I’m tired,” Keith growls, “of taking care of your goddamn trash, Prince.” 

He throws the man in the holding cell on Pidge’s ship and buries the body somewhere in the desert. He probably wouldn’t have cared, if he’d been told from the very beginning that this was an execution, not a search. He’d have been able to get his mind right, to work through it before it happened and maybe not follow the guy everywhere, maybe not see that he had a kid and a job in the real world, away from the ground. He’d been trying to escape the life that Keith’s so tangled up in, and _ this _ is what happens. _ God. _

The call with The Prince goes about as well as expected. He doesn’t look surprised to see Keith and smiles in a way that Keith knows isn’t edged with any hidden agendas. 

“Keith! Have you and your team made any significant progress on the mission?” 

Keith shrugs. “Not much new. We’re still working it, looking for some more angles.” 

“Good, good,” he says. “How may I be of service today?” 

“You left some trash on this godforsaken planet,” Keith says, and then, because all he wants to do is spit _ fuck you _in his face, “Shit, Lotor. I’m tired of cleaning up your messes. This fucking buffoon dragged me into some shit.” He shifts the camera so that he can see the prisoner hunched up against a corner. 

Lotor squints. “Did you get his name?”

“Meg-Megalona? Metron? Mettalona?” Keith tries. “I don’t know, starts with an M.” 

“Your observation skills are off the chart as always,” The Prince says. “Yes, okay, I’ll take him. What offense did he commit?” 

“Didn’t tell me he was going to kill someone I found - someone who didn’t deserve it, at that - and was a real bitch about it, too.” 

“Lost your touch, too?” The Prince says. “Didn’t know you’d be the one to balk at death.” 

Keith bristles. “Oh, fuck off, Lotor.” 

“Ah ah ah - use my title, why don’t you.” 

Keith rolls his eyes. “Kiss my ass.” 

The Prince flashes him a toothy Galran smile and the video feed cuts out. 

Keith doesn’t stick around but the next day when he goes back to the ship, the man is gone. 

Shiro is the one who drags Keith out of his head in the end. Keith knows he’s slipping - can feel his bones grow tired and his mind thick with electricity. Keith has done worse things to better people - and one death doesn’t add up to much, in the underground - but he’s always chosen his people better, hasn’t allowed himself to get all caught up in the bullshit politics of it. Some things are fair, and some things are not, and now some little alien girl is going to have to grow up without a father and Keith has _ been there. _He’s felt that, and knows how much it messes with your mind when you look out for someone who isn’t there anymore. 

Shiro pulls Keith away, catching him fading in and out, stuck somewhere in limbo between a Galran fleet and a fight cage. He gets a hand on Keith’s shoulder, the other tugging an empty mug of coffee from Keith’s hand, and draws him away from Hunk and Pidge, who are pacing through the room with post-its and sharpies in hand, and into the kitchen space, against the counter. 

“Are you okay, Keith?” he asks, like it’s the only goddamn thing in the world that actually matters. 

“I’m here,” Keith says, and shakes his head slowly. “Counts for somethin’, right?” 

Shiro smiles a bit, but it looks strained. He moves to stand beside Keith, leaning up against the counter and nudging their shoulders together. “This about the mission? Cause we’re all there, y’know? I don’t think Pidge has slept in days.” 

He’s right, probably. Keith watches for a second and finds the bags under Pidge’s eyes too prominent. 

“You guys are my team, alright?” Shiro says. “And it’s up to me that we handle everything properly. But I know that this isn’t an ordinary mission, and it’s-” 

Shiro’s hand trembles, when he pushes his forelock away from his eyes. 

Hunk looks lost too, just standing now. The floor is covered in maps and the walls are covered in bits of paper and he’s just looking at his feet, standing in the middle of the makeshift blueprinted gallery, while Pidge stalks around him. 

“It’s getting to you, too?” Keith fills in for Shiro after a beat. 

“Yeah,” Shiro breathes. “But we gotta get through this, and I know that if we can all work together on this properly then we’re going to come up with the right plan. I need you here, Keith. You sleep in the same bed as me, I know that you’re not really here.” 

Cutting through the underbelly of Proxima will take time. Stealing the _ Storm on the Sea of Galilee _will take time. 

Crawling into bed beside Shiro feels so natural. Keith’s heart aches for it every night that he sets out alone, taking too many knives _ just in case. _He wants to dig his claws into it, to drag out the worst parts of the underground and throw them at The Prince’s feet to deal with. He wants to cauterize the wounds, dig out Proxima’s infection and let his energy expand and explode like a goddamn supernova. 

Shiro catches him, pulls him in, though. 

He goes to the gallery three times a week, plasters a brilliant smile on his face for Coran, and buys baked goods on his walk back to the apartment. 

Every evening he flops onto the couch and stares at the ceiling while they try to come up with something, anything. They’re surrounded by ripped-up pieces of paper and pens out of ink, and they go through so much coffee that Keith doesn’t know what force of science keeps their hearts beating at the right frequency to keep them alive. 

Every night he crawls into bed with Shiro and somewhere between coming down from the caffeine high and sinking into the feeling of being safe, he burrows into Shiro’s chest and breathes deep when he feels Shiro’s strong arms come up to pull him in closer. 

They get strung out and stagnant a month later, when Shiro goes to a local cafe to play the piano for pocket change and Pidge and Hunk spend most of their time in the ship, working on tech and upgrades. 

A month passes and then another one and suddenly it’s been five months and every single door has been slammed in their face. They sit on the couch until Shiro stands all stoic by the door and Keith paces the room like a caged animal seconds away from snapping and slicing holes through the barrier between him and the rest of the world. They know that they’re truly fucked when Hunk gets an ugly look on his face - far too harsh for anybody as kind and beautiful as him. Pidge rips a page out of her notebook and balls it up, chucking it at the opposite wall with all her strength. 

The Prince calls, and it’s their collective breaking point. 

“I need it done. Your time is quickly leaving you,” he says, grimly. 

He says that he’s going to start pulling zero’s from the end of their checks. He says that he’s going to start paying visits to nearby fight clubs - hint at Shiro’s location just enough to give them away so that they can get their blood-caked hands on him again, drag him down beneath the flames, and throw him in a cage like the only thing he’s worth is a good fight. 

The Prince reminds Keith of the list of names that he has - families, friends, and loved ones of people that he’s taken from, ripped pieces from just so that he could get by, make a decent enough living for himself, seeing red like it was the only goddamn colour to exist in the world. He says that he’s going to tell worlds of the people who Keith has put down, the rabid monsters who some people called friends. He mentions the empires that Keith has ripped through and stolen from. 

He tells the same to Hunk and Pidge, reminds them just how unsafe they are, just how _ wanted _they are, how many civilizations want nothing but their heads on sticks and their blood dripping out into rivers. 

He reminds them that they’re not good people.

And all Keith can think about is The Prince’s name, and how he had given him the name _ Lotor _like it held some sort of importance, like it was powerful and could be used for something if Keith chose it so. But the name holds nothing - not ashes, not blood - for it is nothing but a rumor, the name of a ruler’s dead son, and there’s nothing that Keith could do with it because- 

-Because, what’s he going to do?

Keith is a thief. 

Keith hates it, the way they throw something together over the next two days. They don’t sleep, barely eat, and Pidge is shaking by the third morning, hair gone wild and breath poisoned with the stench of coffee. Hunk is forcing his eyes awake, but they’re bloodshot, and tears leak down his face each time he yawns. 

Shiro’s making more coffee and Keith can see the way that he’s trying to keep it all together. 

“Is this seriously what we’re doing?” Hunk says, and he rubs his hands across his face. “Really?” 

Pidge nods, but she looks so wrecked and the words are wrenched out of her like she’s handing out death sentences. “This is the only way.” 

They look over it again and Keith feels sick, and Hunk leaves the room with a sob that’s barely concealed. Pidge follows him but it looks like she wants to stay behind, wants to run out the door and into her ship and fly away as far as she possibly can. 

Shiro puts the pot of coffee down in front of Keith and Keith almost puts his fist through the wall, because this is _ stupid. _

“How can you be okay with this?” he says and stands, because his entire body feels like a livewire, like a ticking time bomb, like he’s going to fucking explode any second. 

“There’s no other way,” Shiro says, and he sounds destroyed and blank and completely accepting, like all the fight’s been drained out of him. 

“Fuck that,” Keith says, loudly. “That’s bullshit.” 

“We’ve gone through everything,” Shiro recites, but he sounds angrier this time, more alive. “We need to get this done, and we need to get it done now.” 

“The risks-” 

“I know the risks.”

“Shit,” Keith says, almost yelling. “Goddammit!” He grabs at his hair, pulls it, like it’s going to bring with it some sort of clarity. 

“Careful, the neighbors,” Shiro says. “You don’t want to draw any attention-”

“Fuck the fucking neighbors!” Keith yells.

“Keith.” 

“And you-” Keith stabs a finger at Shiro’s chest. “Really? You’re our leader, and this is the best you can come up with?”

“Keith-”

“No! What the fuck, Shiro? What the actual fuck? Why is this what we’re doing? How is this the best option? How is this the _ only _fucking option?”

“There is no other way,” Shiro says again, repeats it, and moves closer like he’s going to try and touch Keith.

“Bullshit,” Keith says. “That’s fucking bullshit, Takashi.” He spits the name like it’s venom, and it lands like a snakebite. Shiro recoils, flinches back before he can regroup and take the hit like he’s been trained to. 

“I don’t like it either,” Shiro says. “I hate it just as much as you do.” 

Keith looks to Shiro, takes in the way that his shoulders rise and his palms face out, the way that his eyes are welling with unspilled tears - the uncertainty, dripping off of his frame, emanating in waves. Lost - that’s it, that’s how he looks - completely and utterly lost, being pulled down a path that’s not going to lead anywhere good.

“This is bullshit,” Keith says it so that Shiro doesn’t have to, and knows that he takes the words from between Shiro’s own lips. 

It’s a consolation, the way that Shiro opens his arms, pulling out all that hatred from Keith’s veins in a bone-crushing hug. 

It’s supposed to be comforting, something reassuring, something kind. 

But- 

But all that it feels like is a goodbye. 

They’ve set it for the following week so that they have time to prepare, get everything sorted and seamless. It’s an impossible task and the plan is rough, far from seamless. There’s countless holes in it, countless ways that it could be pulled apart and shredded to bits.

Keith spends every night of the week waking up tangled in sheets that he tore from Shiro. He wakes up in a cold sweat, feels the panic set in and take hold in a way that the anger does too, sometimes. The fear is different though. Its hold is sharper. He feels it stronger in the back of his neck and the pit of his stomach instead of the dead center of his chest, where the anger sits. 

He’s curled up against Shiro and then wakes and almost puts him in a chokehold before his mind comes back to him. Shiro clings to Keith back, humming something low in the back of his throat, breathing deep so that Keith has something to copy, automatically. 

The build-up before the mission, before the release is never this bad - _ has _never been this bad. It’s an itch that he can’t seem to reach. It claws at him, fills him with lava until he’s burning with it and flinging open the windows, trying to breathe but feeling as though there’s a fist closing around his throat. He paces, goes through the motions of making coffee before pouring it down the sink, can’t stand the bitter feel of it on the back of his tongue, can’t stand the way that it amplifies his head, feels it thudding through his core. 

They’re all handling it with difficulty. Keith is a livewire, but Hunk collects things; he gathers up all the old photos of his family and keeps them in his pocket, tucked away and ready to leaf through. He gets assorted muffins or cookies or squares every day and snacks on them like he needs them to breathe, drinks all the coffee that Keith doesn’t pour out. 

Pidge organizes everything until it comes full circle and falls back into chaos. It’s too much of a good thing, the way that she rips pages from notebooks and colour codes sticky notes and tacks things to the wall, grabs string from somewhere until the wall looks like that of a serial killer. Keith opens a cupboard one day to find that all of the mugs have been arranged by colour - lights to darks, from left to right. All the laundry gets done at some point, and the couches are stacked and pushed further to the side to make room for her tech and gadgets. 

Shiro looks like he’s ready to go to a funeral. He sinks into the role of leader like it’s dragging him in and he can’t pull away from it’s grip, instead of going into it by choice. When Pidge gets to be too much he sends her away on a goose chase, asks her to track something down that doesn’t exist, just to keep her brilliant mind focused and honed for a few hours. He smiles warmly at Hunk, talks him through it, lets him draw from Shiro’s own confidence. He holds Keith tight in a way that nobody else can, helps Keith come down from all that boundless panic and worry. 

Keith and Shiro do the last walk-through of the gallery the day before everything’s set to happen. They walk close enough that their shoulders bump up against each other and the back of their hands fall together with every stride. 

They go to the piano room and Keith sits beside Shiro on the bench just to listen to him play, drinking in the sound of the keys like he needs it to stay alive. 

They take their time, drifting between paintings and sculptures that have become familiar over time. 

“You gonna be good for this?” Shiro asks softly. 

“Gotta be,” Keith says it like a statement, like something that’s always going to ring true. “It’s not going to work if I’m off my game.” 

“It’s going to work,” Shiro says as they leave the gallery. It falls flatter than it should, but the thought is there. 

“I just want it to be over.” 

Shiro reaches over and takes Keith’s hand in his own. 

_ IV. _

Keith straps on his body armour tight over his chest, and he sinks into the mission. Their time is short. The armour is hard against his chest - unforgiving. Adrenaline spikes in his bloodstream as he pulls on his boots, settling into the mission like it’s the only thing that exists. 

He straps knives everywhere that he can reach and some guns too, for good measure. They weigh him down, but his muscles are toned and taut. He pushes his hair back but it cascades down his forehead anyway - not enough to disrupt his vision, thankfully. 

He pulls on his gloves, tugs the straps tight so that they don’t move. 

He thinks _ this is it, _and despises the way that it feels like an ending. 

He’s ready; don’t get him wrong. The feeling pulsing through his veins is excitement, searching for a release that the mission will hand him on a silver platter - the chance to let himself go, to put all that training to the test and see how it pans out against an army. He knows he’s good at what he does. He also knows that he has the absolute best team he could have possibly imagined by his side. 

They’re _ good _together. They’re so good. 

Some part of him prays that they will be _ good enough _ though, when it comes down to the finish line.

He throws a punch at Shiro that’s not meant to land, just to bleed out a little of the shakiness - the uncertainty. 

Shiro catches his fist in midair, twists his arm behind his back and gets in close, breathing next to Keith’s ear. “Is this going to be a problem?” he asks, but it’s gentle. His hair tickles against Keith’s cheek and he twists away. 

There’s no point in shading over the truth, to dulling it down, not when they’re this far into it, not when they’re this close to pulling off the impossible. “Tell me it’s going to be okay?” Keith says, and he doesn’t mean it to come out as pitifully soft as it does. 

Shiro’s eyes soften. “Keith,” he says. “I’m not making promises that can’t be kept-” 

Keith makes a noise of protest but Shiro continues quickly. “-but this is as solid as it’s gonna get. This plan of ours is the best that it can possibly be. We could spend years trying to make something else perfect but still come back to this one. So it’s the one, okay? If we stick to it, if we’re careful, we’ll all make it to the end alive.” 

“That’s not very reassuring,” Keith grumbles. 

“I’m sorry,” Shiro says, and draws Keith in close like he’s done so often. He gets his arms around Keith and holds onto the back of his armour like a lifeline, and Keith can’t stop himself from clinging back just as hard, grabbing onto Shiro and trying to forget the world spinning around them. 

It's goodbye this time, Keith knows. He knows it in his soul and oh, how it aches. 

Pidge and Hunk emerge from the hallway minutes later - Pidge in hard tactical gear like Shiro and Keith, whilst Hunk hangs back in something a tad more casual. He’s running the monitors and comms, making sure that everybody stays in line from the safety of the ship. 

He’s going to need to make sure that the ship is ready to take to the skies _ fast. _God knows their escape has got to be flawless for anything to work. 

Energy pulls Keith in then, gets its claws into his core and pulls him into something dangerous, someone angry, someone so far away from the person that Keith has always wanted to be, and has achieved some semblance of on Proxima between the portraits and piano music. He grabs his last knife from the table and spins it up into the air so that he can catch it again. The sharpened blade whistles as it slices through the air.. 

“Show off,” Pidge grumbles and Keith grins, all toothy and mean - like a wolf, tensing to launch. 

The worry fades from him, replaced with the familiar rush of adrenaline. Maybe this is who he’s always meant to be. It’s who he was raised to be, at any rate. 

Keith was a warrior once, and a thief. He’s been something worse once, when he was lost and drifting between here and there and not caring about what damage his soul took or how many hits his heart could bear before it gave out. He’s been something bad enough that the Prince saw him as useful and he’s still there, he thinks. He’s caught on the edge of it at least, and he might be able to escape at some point. 

If he lives long enough. 

The Prince exploited him, used him up and spat him out, throwing money on him to make his problems go away, because if there’s anything that every thief carries within themselves it’s the belief that nothing is off limits, as long as the price matches or surpasses the actions. Keith has worked in the underground, dug his way through cities and bones. He’s killed, but then again they all have, in their own ways - Pidge, Hunk, and _ Shiro, _ God, _ Shiro. _Shiro, who’s standing before him now, shoulders thrown back and hands steady as he pats Keith’s shoulder, gripping it tight before letting go. 

He looks grim but Keith can see the excitement bubbling beneath the surface. He wants this just as much as Keith does - through the terror of everything that can go wrong, it drags them in, claws so deep that there’s no hope in hell of escaping. 

Keith glances at his wrist, watches the numbers count down. “Twelve minutes,” he says, looking around. “Got everything?” The smell of gasoline is starting to get to him, making his head swim. 

“One last sweep,” Shiro commands, raising an arm. “Hunk - prepare the ship.” 

Pidge heads off in one direction and Keith goes the other way, flinging open his and Shiro’s door. The bed is unmade and messy from a night of nightmares, but it’s stripped clean. There is nothing left behind. Keith ducks down anyway, checking under the bed, the closet, and feeling around the picture frames and lights for any hidden bugs that they may have missed upon entry - if someone knows about what they’re about to do… 

Well, it wouldn’t be good. 

Keith checks the bathroom and Pidge and Hunk’s room. 

The stench of gas burns his nose and chokes at his throat. He grabs the empty canister and tips out the last few drops onto the living room’s carpeted floor. 

“Two!” Shiro calls and Keith gravitates towards him, standing between the open doors to the deck. 

“Any last words?” Keith muses. 

“Didn’t think I’d end up dying this way,” Pidge says. “Fate’s a bitch. At least it’s by your guys’ sides, right?” 

“Sure,” Keith says. “Real glass half full way of looking at it.” 

Keith looks at his watch, counts the seconds. 

“It’s going to be fine,” Shiro says slowly. “As long as everybody manages to stick to the plan.” 

“We always stick to the plan.” Keith grins, all wild-like. 

It’s terror, in the end. That’s all it is, this manifestation of energy. Because Keith- 

Keith looks to Shiro and Pidge and back at Hunk, who’s in the ship behind them, and all he can think about is that this may be one of the last moments of their lives and he’s not prepared for that, not ready to go through more losses. They’re his team. He can’t _ lose _them. 

“Twenty seconds,” Keith says and they tumble into the ship, hovering for a second, huddling around the hatch, and Keith fists a hand through a strap on Shiro’s shoulder and holds him there whilst Shiro lights the match. 

“Let’s do this,” Shiro says, and the lights of the ship flicker and die around them. They are swamped in darkness until Shiro lights the match. 

By the time it lands, the ship is a kilometer away. 

_ Let’s do this. _

They’re backlit by flames, and it looks like the world is ending. 

“Charges ready.” 

“Time it.” 

“Five. Four. Three. Two -” 

It sounds like the world is ending when the second explosion goes off, and they can hear the screams from inside the ship. 

They don’t hear the next two explosions but they can feel them rocking the ship. They see as their world erupts into flames and smoke rises towards the heavens - huge and angry. The city-wide alarms go off, wailing. Keith breathes and when his breath gets stuck in his throat, he presses and hand to his chest and forces it. 

“Three,” Keith says. 

“Hunk, you’re on time now. Count us in.” 

They only have one goal, really - to get the painting out. The secondary goal would be to stay alive whilst doing so. God - this is crazy. This is so unbeleiveably stupid. 

“Two,” Hunk calls out, a minute later. 

Keith counts all of his knives, sits back in his seat, and tries to ground himself in the feel of the ship around him. 

“Thirty seconds.” 

“Charged and ready,” Pidge shouts. 

“Twenty five.” 

“Set it!” 

“One!” 

The blast radius hits the ship and Shiro grabs onto Keith, holding him back. “You good?” he says, too gently for what they’re doing. 

“Fine,” Keith bites back. “Stop worrying about me. We need you to be focused on the mission.” 

Shiro salutes and maybe it’s supposed to be a mockery but the way that Shiro does it so seriously, mouth set into a flat line and eyes soft, makes Keith’s heart do something weird in his chest. 

“That was the strongest one,” Pidge grits out. 

“Thirty,” Hunk says. “Keith’s up.” 

Keith grabs the cylinder of nanotech that Pidge has been working with on-and-off throughout the course of the last couple months. Her mind is brilliant and she’s managed to design the bugs to eat at and reroute existing tech to her own servers. They will, hopefully, put all of the gallery’s electronically powered services into Hunk’s control - everything from lights to elevators to security feeds.

The ship speeds closer to the gallery and Keith crouches down by the hatch, unscrewing the cap off of the container and holding it out, poised and ready. 

“Three,” Hunk says. “Two, one-”

Keith tips the nanotech out and the ship lurches as Hunk maneuvers them away from the gallery. Kieth slips, tumbles and almost falls out of the goddamn ship. Shiro grabs him by the back of his tactical gear and hauls him back, throwing him clear away from the hatch. “Careful!” he shouts. 

Keith spits, wanting to growl something mean back because his blood is racing and there’s no _ escape. _

“Got ‘em,” Pidge says and grins something awful, expanding a holographic control panel so that they can all see the video feeds popping up from the tech’s point of view. “Going in.” 

“You have fifteen,” Hunk says. “Gotta stay on time.” 

Keith never really thinks about all the ways that Pidge is dangerous until they’re in the thick of it and she looks like a wolf ready to launch herself at prey, teeth showing and muscles tense. He’d be scared of her, he thinks, if he didn’t know her. Her body is tilted forwards, vicious and snake-like. “Look,” she says.

And the sky splits in two with light and then there’s nothing at all.

Then, through the darkness, something explodes and the ship churns in the air for a moment, and Keith could swear it almost starts falling before Hunk wrestles control over it again. “Twenty,” he bites out. “Turning now, get ready.” 

Keith holds onto the straps hanging from the ceiling so hard that his knuckles turn ghostly white, and the ship whips through the air. 

They’re turning back towards the city and Keith can finally see the full extent of what they’ve done. The entire thing is up in flames, and maybe he did tear through the underbelly after all - it’s all the same when it’s all burning. He can’t stop himself from gasping, though. 

“We needed this distraction,” Shiro reminds them grimly, and Keith has never been fond of the rich who live lavish lifestyles in the limelight of a planet covered in gold, but it seems awful that their lives would have to be torn down around them like this, between flames and burns and giant, rippling scars. 

The city is dark except for the flames. The nanobots wiped everything out, down to toaster ovens. There’s nothing left except for the fires and the screams. They have brought with them the manifestation of terror, in its rawest possible form. It’s blindness - dark and flickering. 

It is dark, but the fire splits it - shatters it into shards. 

They get back to the gallery and there’s a perfect hole in the roof, ready and waiting for them, and all Keith can think about is how he should have told Pidge that she was his sister, and should have told Hunk that he’s the strongest force in their team and the one who holds them all together, should have told Shiro that he loves him. He should have held them all closer for a little bit longer because _ this is it _ but it’s also the _ end. _

The ship drops down, and they never got their proper goodbyes. 

Keith jumps. 

“Twelve,” Hunk says into Keith’s earpiece when he lands softly on the ground, unclipping his rope from his belt. “Armed.” 

Keith gets both his hands on knives and bites at his bottom lip, lowering his center of gravity. Pidge and Hunk land on either side of him, on high alert, in similar positions. The dust settles and the shapes through the darkness manifest. 

“Go,” Shiro says. 

Keith doesn’t think after the first drop of blood. He sees the splash of red through the dark haze and the dust and that’s all he needs for his mind to make the switch. He fights like his mom taught him - unforgiving. Below them, just four floors away, is what they’re after. Shiro and Keith are on either side of Pidge as she sets the charges against the floor. Straight down is the fastest way, after all. 

“More incoming,” Hunk says. “You’re gonna wanna work quicker.” 

“Copy,” Pidge says. “Should’ve fucking made more nano’s. Or at least powered them with something stronger. Fucking hell.” 

Keith hears the boots stomping against the ground, loud on the tiled floor. 

It gets bloody then, and too gritty for Keith’s taste. He looks over to Shiro for a moment near the beginning to check and see just how fucked they are, but the man who Keith sees glance back isn’t Shiro. Rather, it’s the champion, eyes blank and face masked with somebody else's blood. 

So, reasonably fucked. 

When his knives grow dull, he flings them into a kevlar vest hard enough for them to pierce the skin beneath and goes for new weapons. God - fuck, they just need to give Pidge some time. 

She keeps having to move, can’t work well when people keep running at her. 

He gives up trying to hold back quickly. He gives up on any idea of non-lethal and still feels like he’s not getting anywhere somewhere around the thirtieth artery. In his ear, Hunk is saying something, but Keith can’t for the life of him focus on anything else except for the slice of blade meeting skin and catching on bone. By the fifthtieth he feels sick and keeps slipping on blood. Everything’s too warm - his breaths are coming in short and panicked as he swings around, catches a guy’s throat with the serrated part of his knife, and tugs until blood runs freely down his arm. His body screams and gurgles, but slumps to the ground. 

Pidge gets the explosive charge planted and is dealing with her own onslaught of attackers to the side of it, far enough away that it won’t hit her but Shiro is fighting practically on top of the thing, ruthless in a way that even Keith has never been able to hit. 

Shiro fights with brute force, snapping necks like they’re twigs with his cybernetic arm. 

Pidge’s hand-to-hand skills aren’t as good as Keith’s or Shiro’s, but he watches her hold her own out of the corner of his eye whilst he tries to devise a way to get Shiro to move _ out of the way _. 

But then somebody pulls a gun too close to Pidge, gets it too close to her sharp mind, and he sees them thumb off the safety- 

-And then he doesn’t see anything for a long while, red taking over his vision. 

When he comes back to himself there’s a circle of bodies around him and Pidge is standing behind him. There’s a hole in the floor and Shiro is ushering them closer. Hunk says something in his ear, and Keith should just turn his comm off at this point - he can’t hear anything over the rush of blood and the gurgle of it clogging up chest cavities, anyway. Keith hooks the rope onto his harness and jumps down through the hole without a second thought. Pidge lands neatly beside him and Shiro follows half a moment later. 

Shiro isn’t himself - he’s the champion, distant and cold and barely a leader, the way he’s so full of tension now. 

Keith steps up and draws a gun because it’s _ faster _ , and _ easier _, to not see who he’s putting down. Pidge lays the charge and backs away. Keith pushes Shiro after her and lets the guards come closer to him and then leaps away, twisting through the air as Pidge sets off the explosive behind him and it’s messy - God, it's so messy. 

Keith jumps down, because there’s nothing he can do about what’s behind him now. 

They get through two more floors and each level is harder. The guards are on a one-way track to their location, though thankfully none of their backup has arrived - likely too occupied in other parts of the city. Plus, any distress call would have been intercepted by Hunk back up at the ship. 

They get to the Storm on the Sea of Galilee’s room, and there’s more guards localised here than in any of the other rooms so far. 

Keith is sweating but his hands are steady, and though his breathing is erratic at best, his head is not becoming light and he can still move quickly, can still do what he needs to do. Every body that he drops is replaced by a dozen more. 

Blood flows from his blade and when the last one grows dull, and his cartridges are empty of bullets, he throws the gun hard enough to send a guard stumbling back and lodges the last of the knives into the side of a skull. Then he gets his hands on them, twisting and turning, kicking and clawing like the perfect little Galran soldier that he was raised up to be. 

A soldier. A murderer. 

A killer, a thief. 

Blood runs in rivers and Keith slips and slides on it. He gets his thumbs into eye sockets, twists an arm so badly that he can hear the sinew ripping from bone at the shoulder - the body screaming in pain, shrieking. There is wailing when he breaks a guard’s leg in four pieces and snaps a rib just right so that it punctures a lung, bleeding the body out slowly. 

Pidge gets to the painting and grabs her blade from a pouch. 

He smashes out teeth with his elbows, crushes skulls against his knees and throws someone clear through a statue. He gets somebody up against the wall, smashes their head against it until he feels it give. He whirls around, jumps and gets his thighs around somebody’s head, twisting and dropping his weight back until their neck snaps between his legs. 

Pidge slices the painting from the frame in the same way that Keith slices through flesh and bone.

He takes a piece of broken-off statue and caves in a skull and then another. 

He takes hard hits with his back and shoulders, but it doesn’t do much in terms of slowing him down. 

Pidge rolls the painting, practiced and expertly. Shiro fights near her, keeping the hordes of guards off of her so that she can work. She gets the painting tucked away. She throws a painting case at him and he grabs it with one hand whilst smashing a guard’s face into the fall with the other hand. 

Keith disarms the guards and puts them down with their own weapons, easily and quickly, like putting down a rabid dog. He pulls one of his discarded knives from a body and forces it into the meat of another’s thigh, pushing all of his weight into it so that the dull metal tears down the length of the leg. There’s not a universe in which he’ll be able to forget the sound of tearing, ripping flesh. There’s not a universe in which he’ll be able to stop smelling the stench of coppery death. 

Pidge gets her jetpack going, hooks up the rope to her harness and flies from the room without looking back. 

Keith is about to follow her - he only needs to get rid of two more guards so that he can make it over to where the ropes are hanging from the ceiling. He gets one of them out of the way and then gets distracted while working on the second. Because Shiro- 

-Shiro is a whirlwind. It’s grossly beautiful in a way, the way that he twists around, the way that the bodies fall in a crescent around him like they’re nothing more than flies. He’s a storm; he’s a force of nature. But his jetpack is half-missing. There’s a hole in it like somebody got a hold of it, snuck up on Shiro from behind and took a chunk out of it before he could react. 

He is fighting like there is no tomorrow. He is fighting like he’s got absolutely nothing to lose. 

He’s not avoiding all the hits that are being dealt at him - in fact, he’s taking more than he should be. He’s letting himself get hit. 

Something is not right. 

The guards close in on Keith and his focus is ripped to them, but now, his hands are shaking - trembling to the core. Still, he doesn’t miss a hit. 

“Keith?” Static fills the comm. “Shiro? You guys need to get up here right the fuck now.” 

Keith grabs two guns off of the nearest body and they settle into his palms like extensions of his hands. He thumbs off the safety and aims, shoots, and aims again. Inhale, exhale, easy as breathing. His body is sweating. It is being pushed to its limits - even his Galran stamina runs tired. It’s the anxiety - it eats through his energy reserves. 

Hunk is yelling something in his ear and it’s not helping, hearing somebody else’s fear pounding into his skull when his own hands are slipping with blood against throats. He knocks his comm out when he gets a free hand and throws everything he has at Shiro, trying to get to him, because Shiro’s jetpack won’t be working and they need to get _ out _ right _ now _.

He’s leaping forwards when everything - 

-absolutely _ everything _-

-comes crashing to the ground. 

Something pierces through the layers of body armour into the meat of Keith’s shoulder and it _ burns. _

Keith looks down and sees one of his own blades sticking out of his body, between the weak plates of his body armour. He stumbles, fumbles, keeps his body standing and tries to get a hand around the handle but the blood is all slippery and his hands are still shaking and God, the noise - it’s so loud. The screams are clogging up in his head, making his brain go all fuzzy, and there are black spots growing in the corners of his eyes that he tries to blink away.

He gets his hand around the handle and tries to pull it but the blood is too _ slippery _and it’s pouring from around the blade - he can’t get a hold- 

He drops the gun from his hand to the ground and it falls in a crimson puddle. 

Something hits him from behind - a bullet, or maybe five. They’d be embedded in his armour though, right? Or - or not? 

He coughs up blood, feeling it pooling in his lungs, and the metallic taste stains his tongue. He chokes, looks up frantically for Shiro, and tries to call out but cannot make any noise. He stumbles but doesn’t fall over even though his legs are wobbling at the knees and his boots are sliding across the slick floor. 

Then Shiro’s eyes meet his and something changes. 

Shiro, for the first time, looks scared. And then he explodes, and those guards don’t even stand a _ chance. _ God, a few even try their luck at running _ away. _

Shiro gets to Keith, shoves him into a corner and stands before him. “Evac!” he shouts. “Hunk, NOW!” 

Shiro has always been the best fighter out of all of them. Keith has been meaner sometimes, and more ruthless most of the time, but nobody can compare to the Champion - for Shiro roars, and there’s absolutely nothing that the guards can do to stop him. 

They hold it together like that, Keith tucked into the corner and trying to breathe, Shiro standing in front of him, shielding and guarding him. Shiro must hear something through the comms though because he backs up closer, fumbling with Keith’s jetpack with one hand and holding a handgun with the other, taking careful and precise shots in quick succession as an executioner would - putting them down like dogs, one bullet to the center of the forehead. 

Shiro gets them to the ropes, attaches Keith to one of them, and slams a button on his jet pack. It lifts Keith up off the ground, pulling him towards the ceiling as he flails, trying to stay on the ground with Shiro. “I’m sorry,” Shiro whispers, and Keith can read it on his lips and feels it in every fucking inch of his heart. 

“No! No, no - not without you!” he screams, yells, cries, sobs as he’s pulled up. 

Up, 

Up, 

Up. 

Either Shiro cannot hear him or he is ignoring him as he turns towards the fight, facing what has to be over a hundred guards. The last thing Keith sees before he’s pulled up too high is Shiro raise his hands, put them behind his head and square his shoulders - compliant. 

Like he’s offering himself up. 

And then, absolutely everything in Keith’s mind stutters to a halt and nothing is left in him for a long, long time.

_ V. _

Keith comes back to himself in his cot on Pidge and Hunk’s ship. Hunk is by his bedside and, for a second, all that registers within Keith is confusion - he’s waking up, but not in Shiro’s arms. 

He’s waking up and Hunk is beside him, sitting on a stool, and God - he has tear tracks running down his face and his eyes are swollen red from crying. 

For a second - for a brief, small moment within the infinite expanse of time - Keith is confused. He’s confused because everything in him hurts and Hunk is _ crying _and his brain is fuzzy, so rough around the edges that he almost panics on how his memory seems to slip away between his fingertips like he’s trying to cup water in his hands.

“Keith,” Hunk says, and it’s _ broken. _

Keith tries to sit up and pain slices through his back and chest, through his shoulder and down his spine. He crumples, lands heavy on the thin mattress, and says the only thing that he can think about - the only thing that’s sharp and clear in his mind.

“Shiro,” he gasps. “Hunk - Hunk we have to get to Shiro. We need to- he’s - Hunk, help me up.” 

“Keith,” Hunk says again, and it almost looks as if he’s attempting to steel himself but it’s not doing much good. “Keith, I’m sorry. It’s too late.” 

But Shiro was right in front of him, strong and steady as always. Shiro saved Keith, used himself as a human shield, took the hits that Keith could no longer take himself, but he was still _ strong. _That fact was steady, unchanging through any turmoil. 

“I’m sorry,” Hunk says, again. “I’m so sorry.” 

“No,” Keith says, because Shiro is strong. “No,” he repeats. “No, no no no no no no-”

“Careful,” Hunk murmurs. “Stay still, buddy. You got hurt pretty bad.” 

“No, no - I have to get to Shiro. We have to find him, yeah? Yeah, we do, okay?” 

“You need to rest,” Hunk says gently. “You’re no help as you are right now.” 

“We need to find him.” Keith can feel a lump in his throat, can feel tears start to sting his eyes. “Please.” 

“We’re on our way to The Prince,” he say., “Pidge is on it.” 

“The Prince will destroy us,” Keith says, and there’s not much hope now, but then again there hasn’t been much of that even going back to the very beginning. 

“He might not.” Hunk doesn’t sound so sure about it though. “We need to hope for the best. We knew that this was a possibility.” 

“We were supposed to stick to the plan - we weren’t supposed to leave anybody behind!” 

“We’ve contacted Allura. We’re still following the plan. This is what Shiro wanted.” 

“This isn’t what Shiro wanted,” Keith spits. “He never wanted any of this.” 

“It’s what he told us to do,” Hunk says, and he’s talking to Keith like he’s some sort of cornered animal. “None of us wanted this, buddy.” The trembling of his hands says so, and so does the face full of tears and the way that his voice keeps breaking around the edges of Shiro’s name. 

“It’s bullshit, that’s what it is.” Keith makes a frustrated sound. “Help me up.” 

“You need to rest,” Hunk says. 

“What I _ need, _” Keith almost yells, “is to get Shiro back!” 

“You can’t do that with a hole clear through your shoulder and a back full of bullet wounds!”

If he were Pidge, he might say _ fuck off. _But it’s Hunk, and Hunk doesn’t deserve that, so he just gets his hands under himself instead and pushes, bracing himself for the pain and gritting his teeth through it. 

He manages to swing his feet around and plant them on the ground before he drops from the pain.

He’s not sure how long it is - the nausea, the way that the pain eats at his bones and chews on his muscles, the way that his heart clenches and aches - because he fades in and out of consciousness sporadically and roughly, like the waves of the ocean during breaks in a storm. He crashes away for moments, sometimes gets in a bite or two of food before he’s out again. He’s not sure what happens or where he is, but his dreams are blissfully void of the nightmares that greet him when he wakes, without Shiro beside him and a missing case where a painting should be. 

It must be a week later, but it could be two. Hell, it could even be three, there’s no way to _ tell, _but they get to the Prince’s fleet. 

Keith knows this because he hears The Prince’s yelling and Pidge’s retorts and Hunk, trying to help them settle, but the back-and-forth is too fast, too full of fire. 

It’s too vicious. Shiro would have been able to get them to stop, but Shiro is-

-Shiro is…

Shiro’s not here. 

Once Keith can stand and get his feet under him without feeling like he’s going to pass out, he goes to The Prince himself. Pidge and Hunk are asleep, or trying to sleep, but Keith cannot for the life of him get comfortable. The bed on The Prince’s ship used to be so comfortable, such a welcome warm embrace after week or month-long missions spent sleeping on a cramped cot in the back of a little ship, but now it feels too big and the pillows feel suffocating, and the blankets are too heavy and no matter how he arranges the sheets he can’t recreate the feeling of sleeping sprawled across Shiro’s chest. 

He goes to The Prince because he cannot sleep - the bags under his eyes enunciating this - and fuck, he means to argue. He goes there to drain some of the anger out, to pour it into The Prince and let him deal with the soul-crushing guilt and fear and pain that Keith is crumbling beneath. He has bits of a speech floating around his mind, an idea of where he wants to go. 

He gets to The Prince’s quarters and hammers his fist against the door until he’s not sure if his fist or the door will break first. He gets as far as saying, _ “Fuck you and your fucking bullshit paintings!” _ before he stops, chokes, and has to hold onto the edge of the doorframe under the weight of a sudden, incomprehensible feeling of being _ lost. _

“Keith,” The Prince says, and opens the door wider. 

The Prince is the type of person who might have been good, once, if the universe hadn’t dealt him such a shitty hand. He cares sometimes, and shows it sometimes too. It’s rare, but it’s still there, just laying under the surface. 

“You don’t care about the paintings, do you?” The Prince muses. 

“They’re-” Keith clears his throat when his voice breaks, and steels himself so that he can speak. “They’re _ pretty, _and I like the art. The history is interesting, right?” 

“I think so.” The Prince sits down in the chair opposite from Keith. “However, that doesn’t seem to be your reasoning for taking these jobs.” 

“It’s good work,” Keith says right away. “I- I don’t know, it’s exciting.” He adds offhandedly after a beat, “Money’s good.” 

“Thieves’ work brings good pay.” The Prince leans forwards more, resting his elbows against the edge of the table when Keith leans back into the chair. “Would you do it if you weren’t paired with Shiro?”

_ Would you do it, if Shiro stayed apart from you? _

“I’ve done solo missions before,” Keith says, and crosses his arms even though it makes his shoulder scream in agony. 

“Shiro has always been there through those,” The Prince says. “You were never truly alone.”

Keith glares. “I’m not alone now, either.” 

The Prince shrugs. “Maybe. But you don’t truly hold the paintings as high as the others do. You chase adrenaline like a dog to a bone, but you can find that in other places for less effort. I wonder sometimes about why you stay.” 

“It’s my job,” Keith says. “I’m good at it.” 

“You’d be better at other things.” 

“What the hell do you want from me, Lotor?” 

The Prince smiles, but it’s so rough around the edges that it looks like a threat. “A confession.” 

Keith glares at him as if he’s looking at a beast. “And what will you give me in return?” 

The Prince looks at him evenly. “I wish to have that painting in my possession and you wish for nothing more than to have Shiro back. I think that we’ll be able to come to a conclusion - I’m willing to lend you forces to bring Shiro back, if you take the painting with you. I’m willing to help you myself.” 

“Yeah - yeah, and then what? We’ll be sent back out into the field and it’s all going to happen again.” 

“I think better of you.”

“Fuck you,” Keith says. “You barely think of us at all.” 

He doesn’t go back to his own quarters for a long, long time. He talks to The Prince until his voice is hoarse and his eyes sting. The Prince loses his even tone after he brings out a bottle of nunvil and calls for a tray of ‘_ the finest snacks you can find, peasant! _’ Keith loses his patience at one point, but gathers himself before it goes too far and he pulls apart his skin at the seams, where it’s still re-knitting itself from launching himself at The Prince and deuling him. 

It’s a touchy subject - talking about Shiro, and the painting, and how everything went wrong. 

But as Keith falls into his own bed, his chest feels lighter than it has for weeks. 

They must continue to follow the plan. It’s the only thing that might get them through.

Allura joins them with the ease and grace that she always carries within herself. It’s The Prince who contacts her, but it’s Hunk who convinces her to come and Keith who asks her to stay. She rarely leaves New Altea - though it was established hundreds of years ago and has been untouched since, she protects it as if it is born of her and cares for all the citizens with utmost love. 

Word has it that Lance found his way over there. 

Keith hopes to God that’s true. He might gain the courage to ask Allura about it one day. He should, he thinks. They all should; they owe him that much. 

They owe him more, actually, but the building blocks are hard to hold steady and Keith can still remember the last time they saw Lance, staring at the four of them in horror. Pidge had a painting tucked under her arm and Hunk way carrying three. 

When Allura arrives at The Prince’s ship she is immediately all business, barely sparing them a glance as she marches into the meeting room and pulls up a map. 

“You three alright?” she asks them all, once The Prince has stepped out of the room and a hush falls over all of them.

“Holding up,” Hunk says. “It’ll be better once this whole nightmare is over.” 

Allura nods curtly and gently offers them an olive branch. “Lance made it to New Altea safely, if you were curious.” 

Hunk lights right up like a Christmas tree. He gets a big stupid grin on his face. “How’s he doing? Has he settled in okay?” 

“He fits in,” Allura says, and smiles softly. “He is quite an interesting one.” 

“Thank you for welcoming him,” Keith says stiffly. “Have you - did you tell him that we were sorry?” 

She shakes her head. “It’s not my job to deliver your apologies, unfortunately.”

“Would he even see us?” Pidge asks. “Cause, I think we’d want to, if he’d have us.” 

“We’ll see. Perhaps.” 

They all pile into Pidge’s ship the next morning - The Prince and Allura sit in the back, making sure all their gear is ready. Pidge is piloting and Hunk is carefully peeling back the bandages on Keith’s back. They come away clean, but hurt to wrap back on across the mass of bruises. 

It’s strange to see Proxima again. 

It’s horrible to see Proxima again. 

Massive holes filled with rubble and caked with dust are all that’s left of Pidge’s bombs. They feel like the wounds in Keith’s mind, still fresh even as the world spins around them. As they speed across the desert Keith notes with satisfaction that the explosion site above the entrance to the festering underground has been roped off and surrounded by tents and aliens in suits. 

Allura’s magic is the only thing that gets them through the atmosphere and piloted close enough to where Shiro is reportedly being held - or to where his corpse lies. It’s a brutal way of looking at it, and Keith would give absolutely everything in the entire goddamn universe for it not to be true, but the tightness in his chest tells him that it’s an option, and his dreams at night only further solidify it within his mind. Shiro might be dead. He might not be. The intel that they were able to get before shipping out was rocky at best and even The Prince was skeptical about it - who can you trust now, anyway? 

Nowadays, one can be used as a tool to hunt down a bounty without being informed that the bounty is to be executed. 

Nowadays, loyalty can be bought with the right price. 

Nowadays, everything can be snached from you in a _ picosecond. _

_ VI. _

“You going to be good to stay here?” Hunk asks, and he puts his hand on the same shoulder that Shiro always did. Some part of Keith wants to shrug it off but another part of him is so starved for it, so hungry for a connection, that he stands steadfast. 

“What d’you think?” Keith asks, and glares even though he knows nothing is going to come of it. 

“I think you’re really freaking brave,” Hunk says gently, “for doing what you’re doing.” 

“I just-” Keith stops shakily. “I just need to get him back, okay?” 

“I know. I get how much he means to you.” 

“Do you? Cause I- Hunk, I-” 

“It’s okay. We’ll get him,” Hunk says it like it’s a fact, a point of life that is indisputable through everything. He says it like it’s universal, like there’s no other option. 

But they could show up and Shiro could already be gone. They could show up and the painting could be gone. Allura’s magic might be stifled or Hunk might be caught or the Prince might give away their position with nothing other than his pure, unstoppable arrogance. Or maybe it would be Pidge that gets them caught; maybe she’d be too reckless, too bold. 

Maybe it would be Lance. Maybe he chased after Allura, trying to keep her safe but stumbling upon the very thing that he had been caught up in not long enough ago. Maybe he’d see them, and think of how he could make it right - think about how he could make his life right and fix all his mistakes in one go. Maybe he’d turn them in when he was too scared to before. 

Maybe the ship would crash suddenly. Maybe the stealth tech would fail. One of Lotor’s people could give them up for a huge crash prize. Maybe it would be Coran to put the pieces together and throw them into jail. Somebody from the underground could track them down - God, Acxa could in a _ heartbeat, _Keith is sure of it. 

Anything could go wrong. Everything could slip through. 

“Goodbye, Keith,” Allura says as she drops through the hatch, beautiful and poised but dressed as any warrior princess should be - encased in armour. 

Keith doesn’t have time to say goodbye before they leave. He might have thought it to be okay one day, but now it just leaves a sick feeling in his stomach because he and Shiro didn’t get a goodbye, either. The ship holds in the air, hanging in space, stuck in some sort of hellish limbo, where Keith isn’t sure if anybody’s okay or if everybody’s already dead. 

_ “You need to stay behind,” Pidge said, without leaving room for an argument. _

_ Keith tried, of course. There wasn’t a fight that he’d balk at - there never had been, ever since he was a kid in a war fleet. “Fuck you,” he said. “Try to fucking make me.” _

_ “She’s right,” Allura said diplomatically. “You’re in no state. Emotionally _ or _ physically.” _

_ “If you don’t stay behind your freedom will not be granted,” The Prince said, which was something he’d started to say quite often whenever he wanted something trivial - whenever he wanted to win a fight quickly. _

_ Keith lunged at The Prince, spitting something like, “Try to fucking fight me, you collossal fucking piece of shit!” _

It didn’t last long - the anger. It fizzled out when Hunk stepped in and died completely by the time he wrapped his arms around Keith. They came to a natural conclusion, calmed down and talked about it rationally. Or, semi-rationally, depending on one’s definition of rationality when it comes to intergalactic “_ but I love him! _” politics. 

Keith curls up on the chair, tucking his legs under himself and taking the silent comm out of his ear. They need complete silence even though they wear the emergency comms. If anything really important comes up, Allura can cast magic strong enough to allow their minds to meld into one another well enough to hear each others’ thoughts, communicating as silently as possible.

Keith holds his forehead in his hands, closes his eyes, and even though he’s never believed in some sort of all-mighty God, he prays. 

_ “Is this all you want from life?” Shiro asked, when they sat in the midst of piles of papers and plans and dead-ends. _

_ Keith snorted and thumbed through a notebook just for something to do with his hands. “It’s all I’ve ever known. I don’t think I could escape it even if I tried.” _

_ “What if you did?” Shiro asked. “Try, that is?” He cleared his throat, but didn’t let the silence fester for more than a couple seconds. “What if… what if we tried to, together? You and me.” _

_ Keith paused. He looked to Shiro slowly and catalogued the honesty in his eyes, the hope flickering there and the forward tilt of his body. His hair fell across his eyes and his lips were quirked up into a small smile. “You’d want that?” Keith asked, just to make sure. Just to make sense of it all before he got his hopes up too high. _

_ “Yeah,” Shiro said, and then, “More than anything else.” _

_ Keith fought to keep a smile down and failed magnificently. He sombered a moment later though, when he realized how impossible it was. “The whole time would be spent running. Even if we managed to convince The Prince to set us free, whole entire planets would still be after us. Pidge and Hunk, too.” _

_ “I thought about that. And… they wouldn’t look for us, if they didn’t think that there was anything to find.” _

God, it was a bad idea - what they came up with that night. It was such a terrible, tremendously awful idea. It was so bad, wrong enough that it might be able to go right if they were able to be so, so _ careful. _But Keith is now sitting alone in a ship, and he wants absolutely nothing else other than to just be down there with the rest of them - to be the first of them to see Shiro. He knows why he’s sitting here. He knows, and he feels in his gut that it’s right, but his heart says that it’s so wrong. 

_ “Where do you want to go, sweetheart?” Shiro asked, one morning - the last morning, wrapped up in one another and covered in fear. There was a tremble to his voice, but it wasn’t strong enough to feel like anything other than nerves. _

_ “I’m not sure,” Keith murmured. “I’ve never thought about it before all that much.” _

_ “Think about it now. We’ll be there in no time.” _

Keith hugs his knees to his chest and thinks of the ocean. He breathes through the feeling of dread and tries to recall his mother’s tales of the beach, of sand beneath feet and the call of seagulls above. He thinks about living quietly, about living good and happy and comfortable. It was always such a foreign concept. It always has been and will always be; there’s no avoiding it, no hiding it. 

_ “If you want your freedom you’ll get me that painting.” _

_ “And if we fail?” _

_ “Then one normally grows accustomed to this life eventually.” _

Keith has been accustomed to the life. Hell, he’s always been. He was built for it, and trained for it where his own instincts were lacking. He likes it even, sometimes. It’s so easy to get all caught up and tangled in the thrill of it and the idea of doing something that nobody else has ever done before. 

He’s not sure how much time passes as he sits there, wishing that he were somewhere else and praying for something impossible. He closes his eyes and sees Shiro, and when he opens them he can feel that massive gaping hole beside him where Shiro _ should be. _He runs his hands through his hair, pulling on it and pushing it away from his forehead. When he can sit still no longer he stretches and stands, pacing around the ship. At one point he grabs a dagger and spins it around his palms, throwing it as hard as he can at a target in the ceiling even though his shoulder screams in protest. The blade embeds itself with a dull thud and Keith laces his hands around the back of his neck, bowing his head. He feels like he’s on fire and in a pool of ice at the same time, like there’s bugs crawling on his skin and eating at his flesh. 

_ This is the plan. _

_ We planned this, and I agreed to it. _

He thinks of the ocean, and of Shiro, and how everything would have been so much better if he took a step back and said _ no. _

There is a movement from below. Keith straightens and launches himself towards the front window and control panels. He sees Pidge, dark clothes blending into the shadows behind her. She’s followed closely by The Prince, who has thankfully tucked his flaming white hair under a dark hat, though he doesn’t look all that happy about it. Keith grabs the controls, pilots the ship further down and opens the hatch. He throws down a ladder and grabs Pidge’s hand to haul her up into the ship a moment later. 

“Is he-”

Pidge slaps a hand over his mouth and shakes her head aggressively. _ Be quiet, dumbass, _the movement says. She moves to grab a harness, attaches it to a hook on the side of the ship, and tosses it out of the hatch after The Prince clambers in.

Two in. Two accounted for. 

Three of Keith’s team is still missing. Fuck, he can’t stand still. He moves back to the front of the ship like a caged lion. His eyesight is better than most, courtesy of his Galran genes, but even he can’t differentiate through the shadows to tell if Shiro is coming. Everything aches and everything is still, and his eyes race back and forth across the ground. His heart is thundering in his chest. He can _ hear _his pulse and can feel fire licking at his skin. 

There are no sirens splitting the sky and the horizon is completely void of flames. It’s all just a swamp of darkness, shadows folding and moulding. 

Then he sees something that might be Hunk. 

He blinks and holds his breath. 

Allura emerges beside him, and they’re not in the light but he can _ see _them and-

And there’s-

_ Shiro. _

He’s limp, suspended between Allura and Hunk, an arm flung across each of their shoulders. His feet drag across the ground. Keith sucks in another breath between clenched teeth. 

The Prince drags him away from the edge of the hatch when he tries to fling himself out of it, and wraps his arms around Keith’s chest when he tries to claw his way free, trying to run to _ Shiro- _

_ Shiro, Shiro, Shiro. _

It’s like a mantra in his mind, like the beads on a rosary. 

_ Shiro, Shiro, Shiro. _

And suddenly, he’s right in front of Keith. His eyes are hazy and unfocused and Allura is holding him up, taking his body weight so that he doesn’t need to bear it himself. There’re lacerations across his skin, blood caked around wounds and soaked through the old tact gear. 

His eyes say that he’s not there. His hand flinches, like he’s trying to reach forwards anyway, and he splits through the silence with a raspy, “_ Keith. _” 

_ VII. _

“It seems you have won,” The Prince says, and nods to Keith. “I didn’t know you had it in you.” 

“It wasn’t just me,” Keith says. “It was a team effort.” 

“Indeed. I suppose I should have split you all up. You’re too smart together.” 

Keith snorts. “Next time you should think ahead a little better.” 

“Perhaps you should stay on, then.” The Prince smirks. “As an advisor.” 

Keith doesn’t even pause before replying, “Hell no. I’m out.” 

“Will you be able to stay out of this life?” 

The words are thrown around flippantly, but they do hold some truth. This time Keith does pause. He considers it, turns it over in his mind. “If you asked me that a few months ago I think my answer would be different. But, y’know… this is the right thing. Most people don’t get a second chance. I want this.” 

“Very well.” The Prince nods. “Please, though. How did you manage to pull it off so _ flawlessly _?” 

“You think it was flawless?” Keith snorts. “Wow.” 

The Prince shrugs. “Everything has played into your favour, hasn’t it?” 

“I had a strong motivator,” Keith says, and grins from ear to ear. It’s nice, he reflects, to be free. “We… we went through every possible plan within the first week of arriving on Proxima,” he begins, and reaches for The Prince’s bottle of expensive nunvil. “We knew that there wasn’t going to be a good way of pulling off the heist, right? And I think you meant for that to happen. I don’t think that we were supposed to be able to complete this one, were we?” 

Keith raises an eyebrow. The Prince smiles with teeth, like he’s trying to scare Keith away from his lie. 

“Did you want us to be caught? Was that it?”

“What I wanted,” The Prince says, carefully, “was that painting.” He raises an eyebrow, as if challenging Keith to ask why. 

If there’s one thing that Keith has never learned how to do, and has barely even considered, it’s backing down from a challenge. “And why’s that?” he asks, keeping his tone light.

The Prince flashes his teeth, damn near showing off his fangs, and says, “My father sent off his own team to try to extract the painting five years ago.” 

“I never heard of that.” 

“No, you wouldn’t have. Not many know about it.” 

“You’d think that everybody would know about it - we did our research. There were no other attempts before ours.” 

The Prince’s grin grows wider. “That’s because nobody ever found out. When you were there, so was our Lord Zarkon’s team.” 

And slowly, grey fades out into black and white and the stark colours manifest themselves into puzzle pieces, falling into place, suspended in the moment. 

Keith blinks. His mouth drops open and then snaps shut as soon as he notices. His eyebrows furrow in the middle as his gaze snaps to The Prince’s eyes. “It was a race,” Keith states. “You sent us on a fucking race against your father to try and… and what? Feel good about your fucked-up _ daddy issues? _ ” Keith blinks again and chokes on a manic laugh. “Shiro could've _ died. _ We _ all _could have.” 

“But you didn’t plan for all of you to die. Or any of you, for that matter. You only planned for one thing to go _ wrong. _Don’t worry - you are all very convincing actors. I wouldn’t have known about your little plan with Shiro if I hadn’t seen your notes.” The Prince tsks. “It was quite a foolish thing, to leave them lying around in the ship.” 

“When did you find out?” Keith asks. 

The Prince waves a hand distractedly. “When we were on our return from fetching Shiro. Were your wounds real?” 

Keith glares. “Yes, they were. Are you not angry?” 

“About what? The fact that you betrayed my trust, manipulated me into granting you freedom and still managed to make off with a huge sum of my money?” 

“Yeah, that.” 

“I’m not angry, Red.” Lotor leans in close. “If we’re being honest here, I’m actually quite impressed.” He leans back into his chair. “There I was thinking that I had the upper hand.” 

“Your judgement was clouded.” 

“And as you said… you had a strong motivator.” 

Keith cracks his knuckles and stands up as if to leave. “I have to know, though. Who was it that your father sent? Did we know them?”

“As far as I know...” The Prince shrugs. “...he sent an Altean called Coran and some Galran half bloods going by Acxa and Ezor.” 

Keith stares at him. “Coran? Acxa?” 

“Unless my intel is incorrect, then yes.” 

“It was Zarkon who set up that - that bullshit hit job, then.” 

“It is likely that he would have tried to slow your team down.” 

“Did you tell him that we were going to be there?

“No, I presume that he was able to deduce that all on his own. Or, at least, his team was able to.”

“Acxa.” Keith groans. “I met her in the underground. _ Fuck.” _

“You’re smart, Keith. They may have won that one, but think about who now stands with the painting. It’s over now. You have your complete freedom, I have a beautiful painting to hang by my throne, and my father will have to live the rest of his life knowing that what he was not able to complete in five years, I did in a matter of months.”

Keith snorts. “God, Lotor - how did we all manage to win?” 

“The stars aligned,” The Prince says. “No other team would be able to accomplish such feats.” 

Keith nods and finds himself smiling despite himself. “We all really did win, didn’t we?” 

There’s a giddy feeling in his chest when he thinks of what lies before him now. All the debts have been settled, all the red ink erased. _ Freedom. _

“May I ask,” The Prince says, as he follows Keith towards the door, “where your team is heading, now?” 

Keith turns back to him with a smile on his face. “Is that _ care _I hear in your tone, oh Great One?” 

“It’s been a… an adventure, and a pleasure, working with your four,” he says, and for some reason his eyes refuse to meet Keith’s. 

“Hunk and Pidge are heading back to New Altea with Allura. We have an old friend there - you might remember him, actually. His name’s Lance. We all left it on a pretty bad note a while ago. But we’re trying to make amends. Pidge is interested in how she can incorporate some of the Altean’s magic into her tech, so I hope that the universe is ready for that whirlwind. And as for me and Shiro, well…” Keith grins - God, he can’t stop himself from letting a massive smile split his face. “...we’re going to the ocean.” 

“Where?” The Prince asks. 

“Earth,” Keith says simply. “_ We’re going to Earth _.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to everybody who helped me along the way - I've had this idea in my head for a very long time but it wouldn't have turned out like it did if not for some key individuals.  
First - to my absolutely wonderful artist, [uwukeres](https://uwu-keres.tumblr.com) , who is amazingly talented and the best person I could've been paired with.  
Next - to Katelyn. This is the third long fic of mine that she's agreed to beta and as always she did a fantastic job and always manages to figure out what I mean when I write massive 50-word sentences with way too many adjectives.  
I wrote literally this whole thing whilst doing sprints in the [Hello, Keith server](https://discord.gg/zKcAWYe), so thanks to everybody in there who sprinted with me and kept me motivated.  
Finally, a huge shout-out to Ryn for coming up with a title!! <3
> 
> I hope everybody enjoyed reading this! God knows I had a blast writing it.


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